


The Fallen

by softlybarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Jewish Bucky Barnes, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, Super Soldier Serum, Time Skips, Torture, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2018-12-17 21:01:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 23,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlybarnes/pseuds/softlybarnes
Summary: When the reader is taken by HYDRA there are a lot of things she doesn't expect. She doesn't expect kindness or friendship or love. Yet it's there, in the form of another prisoner, a young man exploited.Although they often lose themselves throughout years, decades, they never lose each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a series I'm working on. However, I'm not sure if people would like to read something like this.
> 
> Please let me know if you like this and would like to see more. It's sorta my baby and I'm a little afraid to be sharing it.

“What are you doing to him?” Her voice cracks on every word.

There’s a simple reply. “Fixing him.” Hot breath hits her neck, chapped lips skim the shell of her ear. “And you’re next.”

A shiver runs up her spine. The man across from her stares at her with intensity in his eyes, with apology hidden in the depths of the blue.

The man is sitting in a leather chair, his hair dirty, his skin bruised and welted. “Go to him.” The other man is whispering in her ear. “Go. You’ll be here for a while.” There’s a pause before he hisses, “You’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

Someone prods her forward with what feels like the barrel of a gun.

“Go.” He sneers one last time.

The young woman takes a few shaky steps forward until she comes to a stool. She hesitates for half a second before another person shoves her down into the seat. There’s a whirlwind of activity then as everyone leaves the room.

The man, she realizes, only has one arm. He’s skinny and broken, one eye almost swollen shut, scrapes, burns, and other marks mar his skin along with the bruises and welts. They extend over his face and chest and down his arm. She would wager that beneath his uniform pants the pattern continues. His bare chest and his forehead is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, looking fevered in her opinion. He looks like he’s been through hell and based on her short time here she would guess he has been.

Slowly, his eyes rove over her body and back to her eyes. “Hello,” he greets, voice cracking. Her eyes widen upon hearing the foreign language and she shakes her head.

“I do not speak English,” she whispers to him in her own tongue. “I’m sorry.”

Hopelessness fills his face and he huffs out an exhausted breath. He can’t understand her but he’s gotten the gist. Her eyes drift to the place his left arm should be, examining the tight stitching, as she wonders why they’ve been left together. “I fell off a train. There was snow. And I thought that they were coming to save me at first. I really thought I’d get to go home.” The young woman lets him speak, even if she doesn’t understand a word of it. His arm is strapped down against the arm of the chair, along with his ankles at the base.

Tentatively she reaches out and puts her hand over his, which is clenched into a fist. It’s shaking and he murmurs something else to her that she doesn’t understand. Something tells her its gratitude. She thinks he might have said _thank you_.

Her mouth quirks into a quick smile before it drops.

“You’re like me.” He's talking again. “You don’t want to be here. Did they hurt you?” The man asks even though he knows that they did and that she doesn’t understand him anyways. “They hurt me too. I’ve been fightin’ ‘em every day, and doll…lemme tell ya, I think they’re finally gettin’ tired of my shit. Which leads me to ask, why do they have you here?”

She wonders how long he’s been alone, been here. He's speaking as though there's someone to be spoken _to._  

He’s quiet again and she feels like he might be waiting for her to say something, even if he can’t understand her. Maybe he longs to hear a voice that isn't shouting at him. 

Instead of something complicated she meets his eyes again and slowly points to herself with the hand not covering his. She nods at him, finger still pointing at herself, and whispers her name.

For a moment he doesn’t say anything, just looks at her eyes, at the color and depth. Then slowly, he murmurs his name back to her. “Bucky.”

She repeats it back, “Bucky.” The accent of her voice catches awkwardly on the foreign syllables. For a moment she drops her eyes and then she whispers, “ _Polska_.” The woman points to herself again.

A frown pulls on his lips. “ _Polska_ …Poland?”

It sounds similar. She thinks it’s right. So, she nods. “America,” he says, nodding fervently. “USA?”

She nods and a small smile overcomes her. An American and a Pole, weren't they on the same side then? The hand that she’s been covering slowly uncurls, two silver tags dropping out from between his fingers. “Take it.” He shakes them at her. “Please.”

The plead in his voice makes her take them from him when he thrusts them at her as best he can. They’re on ball chain. They’re a soldier’s tags. She’d seen other American soldiers with them. She takes the necklace in her hands and nods. “What d’ya think they’re gonna do with us?” He frowns, “Where’d they get ya?” He swallows hard, "Please talk to me. _Please?"_

Her fingers trace over the letters embossed on the metal. _James B. Barnes._ Bucky is speaking again. “What do they want with ya? I know why I’m here…why they want me but…”

The young woman wishes she could understand what he’s saying. Bucky sounds desperate to her ears. She also wishes he’d stop talking so much. It’s making her want to cry. She can’t understand what’s happening and a familiar language would at least help.

A small sniffle leaves her before she whispers in Polish, “They came for my family. We ran. We went to Russia, it wasn't safe there either. The Germans came still and the Russians cared little for us. And now I’m here. I hear the war is ending. And I'm here.” She has an idea suddenly, hope brightening her eyes for just a moment, “Do you know Russian?” She switches languages, having been forced to learn it during her time in the country.

A little bit of fear slinks into his eyes. “What? You know Russian?”

“No, you don't,” she whispers into herself in Polish when he only expresses himself in English. He sounds afraid. “Nothing.”

Loneliness fills her, until his fingers graze along hers. She wonders what’s going to happen, why she was taken, chosen. Why she had been beaten and tortured and forced into this room with this man she didn’t know. She wonders what their fate might be.

She’s hungry and dirty and tired and she wants to go home. But he’s the first person, since they’d taken her from the road she was walking along, that’s been kind to her. He sounds kind at least. His eyes look kind and his fingers are still reassuringly against hers. She looks to the tags in her hand again and lifts them a little, raising her brows, indicating a question. _What should I do with these?_

For a moment he stays silent, thinking. “Keep,” he says. “Keep them. I…things aren’t clear. They make me forget. I’m afraid if they see they'll know that I'm…” Bucky trails off as she frowns and shakes her head, not understanding.

He makes his hand into a fist and then points at her. “Keep.” Bucky says her name gently. “Please.”

The pleading tone is back in his voice. Carefully she puts the chain around her neck and raises a brow. He sighs and nods as she tucks it into her shirt. She’s not sure why she’s doing it. If she’s caught with them they might punish her. Clearly he's been hiding the small silver things from them. But she’s also not sure why they’ve left them alone together.

“Why are we here?” She asks him.

He just looks at her helplessly with the unfamiliar language in his ears. The man had said before he left that they’d be together a lot.

She links her pinky with his.

A crash sounds outside the door but neither of them jump. Their pinkies tighten against each other just a little because they know what’s coming. The door is flung open and someone grabs her by her hair, yanking her backwards to the floor. Bucky's hand is ripped painfully away from her own. The small, kind, comforting contact taken away as easy as anything. 

Bucky is yelling. The men are shouting in broken English. Hit after hit is landed on her already abused body. She screams when something snaps.

A word cuts through the air and the violence suddenly stops. “Stop!”

Blood drips from her nose onto the clean tiled floor as the man who had hissed in her ear earlier does the same thing to Bucky now. The man’s hand closes around his throat as he forces the soldier to look him in the eyes. He isn’t allowing him air, she can tell by the way his eyes start to bug, his skin discoloring.

The dog tags resting against the skin of her chest burns and she screams out. Her yell is fierce, she shouts for the man to let him go. The man turns, releasing Bucky, and she knows she given them exactly what they want by the cruel smile on his face.

“Extraordinary,” he says to the others in Russian. “Only a few minutes together and they’re ready to go to the grave.” He shakes his head and reaches down to yank her up by her hair again. Tears prick at her eyes but she doesn’t let them fall. He smiles as he looks her in the eyes, “How kindness makes us weak,” he whispers before slamming her into a nearby wall. "Worked didn't it? How you all doubted me." He chuckles. 

A guard yanks her roughly back up by the arm as the yelling begins again. Someone is laughing. “Take more blood from him. I want to see a prototype of-,”

She doesn’t get to hear what they want a prototype of as she’s shoved out the door and down a corridor. Her name is echoing behind her on the young man’s lips, his voice a terrible, desperate, fearful scream. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This series is going to be fairly triggering. Please keep that in mind if you decide to read. 
> 
> Thanks for your comments. I'm always happy to hear from you guys. ❤️❤️❤️
> 
> Also! Please keep in mind I don't speak Polish or Russian. I apologize in advance for any errors in translation.

Weeks pass and Bucky doesn’t see the girl again. He searches for her as best he can. When they’re prodding him down desolate corridors, or throwing him to the ground fists already raised against him, or gripping his hair and maneuvering him how they wanted, he looks for her. She’s never there. Sometimes he’ll see a wisp of her hair, or the shade of her eyes peaking around a corner, only for her to disappear.

But it only takes the guards a few days to realize what Bucky’s doing. Their prisoner isn’t as focused on them anymore. His eyes aren’t always trained on their faces, but rather they dart around elsewhere seeking something or someone. The pain they inflict doesn’t seem to be getting the same reaction either.

And so it gets worse.

They’ve just come from the chair, his brain still feels like mush and he’s desperately trying to remember what that skinny, blond kid’s name is and why he feels like he might show up yet and save them all, when he hears it. The blond kid, _Steve_ he reminds himself, vanishes like a curl of smoke in the air.

A bloodcurdling scream echoes down the hall, only increasing in intensity the more time passes. They continue down the hall, Bucky’s heart jumping irregularly, as the cry becomes louder the closer they get. One guard grabs him by the back of the neck and shoves him into a door. Just behind it is where the scream is coming from. “Hear that? You did that. You made us do that to her. Poor little bird. She whimpers so pathetically after. You should hear it.” He pauses, as if after mulling it over. “In fact, I think you will.”

Bucky always feels sick after their torture. Especially after that crackling chair, that horrible electric current. And it’s no different now, sweat coats his skin, his stomach roils, and the room seems to be spinning.

The flickering bulb above their heads burns his eyes. He wants to ask for them to turn the light out, let him lie down, let the sickness pass. But Bucky knows there isn’t a possibility of that. His wildest dream at the moment is to be allowed to lie on the cold floor of the corridor. Really he doesn’t need the light out-

The girl is whimpering behind the door, the only person to have shown him kindness, who seemed to be stuck here out of pure chance just like him. He snaps to attention.  

The guard’s grip on his arm tightens when Bucky doesn’t immediately respond to the horror the way the man wants him to. Another scream rips though the air, strangled and pleading. “Leave her alone,” he whispers, swaying in the guard’s iron grip. Then louder and standing up straighter he says, “Leave her be. You have me. What else do you need?”

The men surrounding him all glance at each other, smirking.

“Boss was right,” one of them murmurs, looking impressed and surprised.

The ringleader of their little group suddenly grips Bucky’s hair hard, yanking his head back as the girl behind the door lets out a pitiful moan. Terror grips his heart as he listens to her wail taper off. “Knew you’d be protective. Playing hero, _Malen'kiy soldat_?” He scoffs and shakes his head. “No, just protective. Just a fucking character flaw. Completely willing to sacrifice for a pretty girl you hardly know.” A surprisingly gentle finger traces his cheek before he’s shoved backward through the door. He sprawls on the floor, scrambling to his feet as fast as he can. Bucky tries to push down the sickness that had surged in him at the soft touch of the man who now looms in his peripheral vision.

She’s on a table, arms strapped down. In exchange of her blood, they’re pumping a liquid Bucky is all too familiar with into her veins. For just a moment her eyes meet his, fear and confusion and hate swimming there, before she passes out. There are other tools littered around her, something that looks horribly like blood crusted on them. He knows it’s blood. He’s been in her place.

“When you think about this moment. Remember that you caused this. Had you let us beat her that day you met, had you said nothing, we wouldn’t have kept her. Remember that you condemned her to this. To her fate being bound with yours.”

Bucky swallows hard and starts to step forward but he’s grabbed from behind before he can get very far. There are strands of hair stuck to her flushed face, he just wants to push them away. For some reason it seems really important. Tears burn at his eyes as he glances away, unable to look at the young woman’s hair any longer.

“You would have killed her.”

Laughter sounds around the small operating theater. “Of course! But think _Malen'kiy soldat,_ wouldn’t that have been better for your _malen'kaya ptitsa_?”

 

~

 

Her name runs around the inside of his skull constantly, incessantly. The image of her suffering, her pain burned into his thoughts.

Another thought enters his mind, an unwelcome one, that they might’ve eliminated her and that’s why he hasn’t seen her since he witnessed her torture. Or maybe she had been a very clever spy, an even better actor. She had said she was Polish but that could have been a lie. Even if she wasn’t, it still stood that the Soviets were supposed to be on their side too and yet they had kidnapped him. And yet, they experiment on him, and torture him, and ask him questions he doesn’t have the answers to, and beat him, and fuck him-

Someone is coming upon his cell and he quickly scrabbles as far back into the dark shadows as he can. He thought that they’d leave him alone for the rest of the day, after what he had gone through that morning, horrible tearing and clawing and whispering and struggling. But when the steps stop echoing and the door is thrown open, no one enters. Instead there’s the sound of a struggle, a faint cry.

It’s her.

The woman is thrown inside with him. The door is slammed shut. They’re alone. For the second time they’re being left alone together. Her eyes rove around the room in panic, thinking that they’ve shoved her into some new form of torment. Then her eyes land on the blue of his.

She stares at him with startled eyes from where she lies face down on the ground and then relief seems to overcome her. Tension drains away from her. “Hello,” she tries, pushing herself up from the floor, nonchalantly, as though they haven’t seen the worst humanity has to offer in the same people. It nearly breaks his heart that she remembered a greeting in his language. Bucky had only said the word once to her.

“Hello,” he murmurs back, his soul aching for another person. Someone who would not hurt him, beat him, threaten him. She probably craves the same.

Slowly, stiffly, she maneuvers herself into a sitting position along the wall, a few feet away from him. He doesn’t say anything as she curls into a ball and buries her face into her knees. But he can hear her murmuring, telling him something he can’t even begin to understand. “I’m sorry,” he offers instead when she looks up. “And I’m sorry for what they do to you.”

Her brow furrows then and she looks like she’s trying to remember something. “Keep,” she whispers to him. “Keep.” She reaches into the collar of her shirt and pulls out his tags. “Bucky.” The name is awkward and heavy on her tongue. She wants to know if he wants them back.

She’s looking at him expectantly so he nods and gives a painful half-smile. “Keep them.” For if he ever needed reminding...

Already, things are starting to slip. He recites things, the important things. His mother’s name and his sisters’ and Steve’s. His home address. His identification number. His own damn name. His rank and unit and birthday.

HYDRA can’t find those tags. Because although he’s worried he’ll forget himself there’s also the possibility they could gain much from having them. He reminds himself that there’s a shiny silver P embossed on his tags, and not the dangerous H, but he still worries. Things could become much worse for him.

He shakes his head and looks to the girl. An idea comes into his mind then. They needed to communicate. Clearly there were plans for them but that didn’t mean they had to play right into them. And besides he wants to talk to someone, push away the loneliness and hopelessness, even if it’s difficult and awkward.

Bucky decides he doesn't care if she's a spy. She's kind and lonely and terrified, just like him. 

“Hello.” He says again, only to get a confused look from the girl, wondering if had had the greeting right after all. Bucky shakes his head and points to himself, “Hello.” And then he points at her.

She frowns and carefully whispers, “Cześć?” It comes out as a question, unsure if she’s understanding him correctly. It's been a fair few years since someone had wanted her to speak her native tongue and she's a little wary of it now.

Bucky repeats it, carefully, a few times until it becomes easy on his tongue. She smiles. She gets it.

And that’s how it starts. That’s how their loyalty starts. That’s how their friendship begins.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! <3 Thanks for reading!
> 
> From here on out there will be a little bit of jumping around on the timeline.

The American is screaming again. His voice rings out high and awful, reverberating around her small cell. They’ve been here awhile now and they’ve both given up the thought of rescue. He seemed to think for a while that someone might be coming to get them, repeatedly describing someone. Although she can’t be sure _who_ because she still can’t much understand him.

He seems to be better at learning Polish than she is at learning English. The girl curls in her corner of the cell which had only become her corner when they stopped separating them at night. She doesn’t know what they do to him, only that it makes him scream so horribly and that he now has shiny bits of metal protruding from his shoulder.

That in and of itself had been a terrible process. The removal of the stump and implication of something else, something _other_.

Bucky is smart. She can tell by his quickly shifting eyes, his ability to remember Polish words like it doesn’t mean anything, and the quick quiet wit always in his tone. He also seems to be getting better and better at understanding Russian. It’s almost eerie how fast he learns, almost unnatural. And maybe it is. Maybe the strange liquid sifting around in his blood has something to do with it.

She’s almost asleep, a strange memory of a golden field and a smaller girl’s hand inside of her own is lulling her into oblivion, when the door is thrown open. Guards march in and let him down none too gently near to where she lies. The lock clicks behind them, no words are exchanged, no resistance given. “ _I jak się masz tego wieczoru_?” Bucky’s voice is hoarse and tired, even as sarcasm drips from his tone.

_And how are you this evening?_

Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, is drying against his temple and splattered against his shirt, “ _Dobry, głupi żołnierz_.”

 _Fine, stupid soldier._ Her voice sounds harsh, but somehow oddly gentle at the same time.

He grins, although it looks to pain him as he shifts onto his back, head on her lap. “We don’t have much time left doll. They said it today. They figured something out, how to make us forget for good. How to make us something else.”

Ignoring his English, which she understood only part of and without any of it making much sense, she says, “ _Powinieneś przestać walczyć z nimi_.” Her voice is soft as she tells him to stop fighting them, cradling his head in her lap, fingers gentle on his scalp.

“ _Wiem._ ” _I know_. Bucky whispers, letting her card her fingers through his hair, his head resting in her lap. “I wish we knew what they wanted with you. At least I have an idea with me.” And then, voice cracking he whispers, knowing she didn’t understand what he just said, “ _Obawiam się_.”

_I’m afraid._

Attempting to comfort him she says softly in his ear, leaning down so if there are guards in the hall they might not hear, “Me too.” English still feels strange on her tongue but she tries anyways, “I am afraid. But I have you.”

“Do you think they will separate us?”

It takes her a moment to translate his question. She shakes her head slowly, “ _Użyją mnie przeciwko tobie_.”

_They will use me against you._

“ _Nie_.”

“ _Tak_.” She murmurs, resigned to it. “They will. Control. _Nie skrzywdzisz mnie. Wiedzą to._ ”

_You will not hurt me. They know this._

Bucky had guessed as much, but it cuts him to hear it from her. It means that he has it right.

Their end is near, or maybe its their begining. But, Bucky thinks, they gave her something too, something is in her blood too. He reaches up and squeezes her hand when she presses it against his cheek. There’s something about her too.

And he’s always had a protective streak a mile wide. His mother always said so.

 

~

 

*Summer 2016*

 

“Is it possible that this woman wasn’t real?”

Bucky’s head jerks up sharply, eyes wide. “What?”

“Is it possible that she isn’t real? Our minds conjure things to help us cope in extreme situations. It’s possible that your mind created this woman to help you deal with the torture and the horror and the loneliness.”

He isn’t impressed with her analysis, not that he ever is. It’s why he had stayed silent for weeks on end, through countless therapy sessions. And then Steve had found out. And then he had been lectured. And so now he talks, if grudgingly.

And every time he does so he’s questioned. It’s not something he appreciates, considering the amount of time and effort it had taken him to recover some of his memories. He especially doesn’t want to hear that the woman there with him had been some figment of his imagination. “She was real. I learned Polish from her, how else could I have-,”

“You know many languages, Mr. Barnes. Spanish, Russian, Romanian, on and on and on.” Dr. Johnson says. “Is there some significance of Poland for you?”

“Just her.”

“Aside from this woman. What was her name again?”

Bucky reluctantly repeats it. “And no. There’s no other significance.”

“Was your family Polish?”

“No,” he grinds out. “They weren’t.”

She’s silent for a moment as she crosses and uncrosses her ankles. She’s sweating and Bucky knows her finger is running over the panic button disguised as her pen. In case he got violent. In case he might snap.

Bucky knows that she had been real. Memories invade his mind, consistently, of her. “And what might her purpose have been? They had you. Why would they need another person? And more curiously, a woman?” He stays quiet, keeps his eyes downcast.

“To control me.”

“They already had control over you. They didn’t need an outside source.”

Something scrambles to the forefront of his mind and he squeezes his eyes shut. “She took my dog tags. I gave them to her. She always wore them under her clothes until they found them.” That had been a particularly horrible day when they found her with his tags. She had been punished severely, Bucky made to watch. Her clothes ripped and tattered, and the screaming alone had been-

“You could have lost them. It was an identity piece to you and the loss of them could have been traumatizing. Therefore, when you realized you didn't have them anymore the girl suddenly had them. As someone to keep you identity alive and safe. ”

He shakes his head, “No. No, you don’t understand. I distinctly remember giving them to her. My hand was strapped down and I had to convince her to grab them.”

“But why would you give away something so key to your identity? It’s much more likely that you lost it somewhere along the way, and your mind instead lead you to believe that you gave it to a kind person for safekeeping. Until you could retrieve it, much like your memories still hiding in your subconscious.”

Bucky is eerily still. Why had he given them away?

It is farfetched. But so is his whole life and sometimes it’s hard for the therapist to understand him. He isn’t a typical patient after all. If someone claimed to be a hundred years old, normally that would be called a delusion. But for him, it's real.

“I gave them to her because I was afraid Hydra would find them.”

Dr. Johnson nods excitedly, thinking that they had reached some sort of realization on Bucky’s part. “Exactly! You were afraid of having your identity taken and so-,”

“No,” he shakes his head. The office is clean and white and pristine. It’s meant to be calming and orderly and comforting but instead he’s reminded of other colorless places. He’s reminded of blank operating rooms and cold cells. Bucky wants nothing more in that moment than to go back to his room and curl up under a pile of soft blankets for the rest of the day.

A headache is starting to creep up on him, his spine stiff with tension. “I gave them to her because I was afraid they would find out something about me.”

She frowns and sags in her seat. “And what were you afraid of them finding out?” She humors him as she marks something else down on her notepad. Bucky hates the notepad. He wants to rip it from her hands and shred it. Because the notebook is used in meetings about him, to _assess his stability._

He's tired of people making decisions for him.

A little flash of panic runs through him as he looks down and mumbles, “I’m Jewish.”

“You are?” There’s surprise in her tone.

“Half. On my tags I had the P for Protestant. My father’s side was Protestant. But there was the chance they might find out. And so I gave them away.” He rubs his thigh nervously with one hand. “Thinking back it might have been a little selfish. She didn’t know what I was saying.”

Her pencil is flying across the paper.

“But I know she was there. I remember her. Not just in the beginning but after too. I remember her always being there. After every mission. After every time they wiped me. After everything and then…they took her away from me.” He pauses for a moment and swallows hard. "They threatened to harm her if I didn't behave or do as they said."

The woman opens her mouth to say something, looking intense and serious and excited all at once. He must be in the middle of a breakthrough, he thinks distantly.

“And I think she’s still alive,” he whispers. “And I want to find her.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thanks for reading and let me know what you think! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

“When is the last time you saw her?” Steve is pacing in front of where Bucky lies on the couch. There are about twelve blankets wrapped around him and all he wants to do is sleep but Steve is insisting on having this conversation.

Bucky shrugs from beneath his blankets. “Why does it matter? None of you believe me.”

Steve sighs and stops pacing. He sits down near Bucky’s legs and leans back into them. It’s a nice, warm weight against him and so Bucky doesn’t say anything about the contact. “It’s not that we don’t believe you, Buck. But it’s…it’s a little unbelievable.”

“And some skinny, asthmatic kid suddenly turning into the world’s greatest fuckin’ super solider overnight through some sketchy science isn’t? Like being a brainwashed, frozen fuckin' Soviet assassin for decades isn’t? Don’t throw that ‘unbelievable’ bullshit in my face just because some shrink thinks it’s easy to discredit me.”

His blood is boiling, he hates these people telling him what’s real and what isn’t.

“Okay, Buck, okay,” Steve says in a placating voice that only serves to irritate him further. “When was the last time you saw her?”

He thinks for a moment, shutting his eyes tightly. “After a mission. No, after they w-,” It takes him a moment to regain his composure. “After they wiped me. She was there. Like she always was. And I remember her letting me out of the metal around my head and my arm, pulling it away from me. She leaned down and kissed my hand, and then someone pulled her away. There was a lot of screaming. She was saying something. Maybe-,” _I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Bucky! I'm sorry. I-_

Watching his friend tremble beneath the many blankets, worries Steve. He lies his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, carefully, trying to comfort his friend. “Do you remember when this was? What year?”

“I don’t know. Not-not that long ago.”

“Why haven’t you looked for her before?”

Bucky’s head snaps up, “What?”

“While you were in Romania?”

“I didn’t exactly have the resources,” he growls. “I was afraid to move around. I was safe in Bucharest.” His voice softens, “And I didn’t know what they’d done with her. Whether she was killed or-or something else. I didn’t want to think about it either.”

Steve staves off the need to ask _why_ though. Why had they kept this girl? No reports ever indicated that the Winter Soldier had been working with a partner.

He still asks. “Why was she there with you?”

“I’ve told you this before. To control me.”

“But-,”

“And to protect me.”

That gives Steve pause. “To _protect_ you?”

“Yeah,” he nods, another headache overcoming him, nausea churning in his stomach. Remembering hurts. Remembering makes him physically sick. “They…that’s what they did to her. She had no regard for her own safety. She would do anything to protect me. Because the Asset was invaluable, something they couldn’t afford to lose.”

Steve mulls that over for a moment as Bucky continues to shiver violently. A frown tugs at the corners of his mouth. “How? How could they convince her to-,”

“They didn’t. They programmed her to. Like I was programmed to-,” He shivers again and clenches his eyes shut.

 

~

 

The girl stands again. The Soldier can’t figure out why, or more accurately, how. But she does, she stands and faces the agents.

She’s bloody and bruised and sick. There’s something wrong with her. She’s thrown up twice already. The room smells of vomit and sweat and something damp. A single bulb flickers above them.

“Stay,” comes the command. She goes deadly still, locked into place, feet firmly against the dirty concrete floor. A direct order of that kind isn’t easy to ignore and for the moment she doesn’t try to fight it.

They turn to the Soldier and he feels sick, because he knows what’s about to happen. “Stay,” they command him as well, even though he hasn’t so much as twitched in the last hour. His muscles are straining from the exertion that this stillness requires.

Then they turn to one of their agents. “Attack.”

He lunges immediately, grinning wickedly as he makes a grab for the Soldier. But, just as she’s been doing for hours and hours, the girl moves, despite the earlier command. One of the only commands she's capable of overriding, and only if the Soldier is in immediate danger. The agent is much stronger than her and easily has her on the ground. But she bounces back up, moves in front of the Soldier again. Over and over and over. Repeatedly, for several minutes, she’s tossed around like a rag doll, but each time she rolls to her feet and drops into a defensive position against the attacking agent.

On a mission, if he were incapacitated, she could feasibly protect him until the agents could retrieve him. Because the Asset, with his new shiny arm, is too valuable to lose. It also made a fun game for them, to see how many times she would get up, to see who could best her.

Eventually they call it.

They let her lie on the cold ground, chest heaving, as the Soldier stares at her. She protects him. He knows it’s because she has to but still, he wants to go to her. He wants to care for her. He _knows_ her. 

He knows her name. He knows she’s important. He knows he should protect her but his feet are seemingly glued to the floor.

The agents are discussing her performance and they seem to be satisfied for the most part. “I think she might be ready. I think they both are.”

“The Soldier could use more training. Discipline.”

Someone laughs. “You just want him to yourself!”

“Ah. Well. Can’t blame me can you? He’s a lot of fun. Very pliant.”

“No,” someone else hisses. “ _Soldat_.” The Soldier snaps to attention. “Take her.”

It’s all the command he needs to stoop and pick her up. He turns toward the hall that will take them to their cell that they’re allowed to share in moments like these. It's mostly because they know the Soldier will care for her wounds and they won't have to.

Two guards follow closely behind them.

Once enclosed in the cell however, safely locked away, the guards leave. The Soldier says her name quietly, waits for her to open her eyes. “ _Zrobiłaś dobrze_.”

_You did well._

“ _Jestem zmęczony_.”

_I’m tired._

“I know.”

Gentleness should not be something one feels in their situation. The Soldier can’t even remember his name, and his back is aching from the white hot lashes that had been streaked across it mere hours ago. A punishment for something he already can't remember doing. But they’re allowed tenderness with each other, so long as the guards don’t see them.

“Bucky,” she murmurs. “That’s your name. Bucky.” Her lips touch his palm gently. "Bucky."

He agrees with a grunt and tugs on her shirt. His brain is itching with the sound of his name in his ears. It feels wrong and so he focuses on other things.

Her skin beneath her shirt is mottled with bruises, every inch of her skin marred with hurt and hate. “You always remember me.” Her ribs are broken but they'd heal soon enough.

“I can’t forget you. They don’t allow for it.”

“They’ll stop hurting you. I’ll make sure of it.” It’s a promise he can’t keep and they both know it.

“1953.”

He grunts again. Acknowledgement. They always brought the girl out first, no matter what, out of the cold. She got the date, if possible, and reminded him of his name. His dog tags had been ripped away from the both of them long ago. “Why do you speak Russian to me?”

He hadn’t even realized that he had been doing so. “I’m sorry.”

Slowly, drawing out their limited time together, Bucky patches her up with the terrible first aid kit they're given. He feels okay for a moment, human. Until she throws up again, sick pools on the ground of the cell. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs this time. “Really sorry.”

He spine stiffens. They'll come now. 

The guards march in and drag her away. For a moment he has a grand ideal shining in his mind. Of fighting them off and taking this girl away from here. He manages to slam on of them into the concrete of the wall, crushing his skull.

But then one of them mutters, “Halt.” And he’s suddenly stuck, immobile. They drag her away. And that’s how he knows. Something hasn’t gone right. She isn’t supposed to be sick.

They messed something up. The serum isn't working the same way in her system as it does in his.

He worries before someone drags him back to the chair and it all goes away again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a short one. The next one will be longer, I promise. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!

“Sometimes I feel like I’m…living a lie.”

Kristina turns from where she’s placing a final photograph on a bookshelf near the window. “What do you mean?”

The other woman glances around her small apartment, newly rented. The floors are worn wood and the walls exposed brick. Warm sun streams in the wide windows, slanting over the second hand furniture. “Like I belong somewhere else, if I could only remember where.”

Kristina rolls her eyes at the other woman, “You’re so melodramatic.”

But she isn’t. The young woman scarcely has memories of before a few years ago. She knows she has a mother and a father. She knows where she grew up and can remember schoolmates’ names but _memories_? No. There are hardly any.

A few maybe. Her mother’s hair, her elementary school building, the sound of her father’s laugh. But there’s nothing definitive, nothing that is distinctly hers. Part of her identity seems to be missing lately and she’s afraid to ask if other peoples’ memories behave this way for fear of going insane.

And then there’s _him_ , hulking and always lurking in the shadows of her mind.

He creeps into the forefront of her mind at the worst moments. Because she wonders what happened to him, why her memories are only flashes, and most of all why there seem to be more memories of him every single day.

She finds that she misses him, someone she doesn’t even know, not really anyways.  

But Kristina won’t understand this. “You’re right. But hey listen, thanks for helping me move. I’ll see you in class on Monday?”

“Did I upset you? Oh, god, I have, haven’t I?”

“No…no, no. I’m just tired.” She threads her fingers together and glances around the room. “I feel better here.”

Kristina nods. “You didn’t belong in England. I’m glad you decided to transfer and come back with me. I don’t meet many people outside the country that speak Czech.”

It seems like something she’s always known, she doesn’t remember learning to speak Czech, and so she just shrugs. “I feel better here I think, closer to home.”

“Good,” Kristina says briskly, grabbing her leather jacket to fish around the pockets for a pack of cigarettes. “Want a smoke before I go?”

The other woman is at the window, looking down into the street. “No. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Suit yourself.” The door slams behind her.

She turns to see the empty apartment and feels stifled suddenly. There’s something missing from her life, if only she could figure out what it is. This is her fifth move since 2014 and she’s starting to get a little sick of it. She’s jumped from Paris to Madrid, Madrid to Marrakech, Marrakech to Berlin, Berlin to London, and now from London to Prague.

Enrolled in Charles University she feels a sense of both home, that she hadn’t felt in the other places, as well as a sense of extreme displacement. She’s missing something she knows she is. She just doesn’t know _what_. 

There’s something she’s missing, besides the memories.

She sits down on a chair near the window, a simple wooden one that creaks beneath her, and tries to figure out why she doesn’t belong anywhere.

Maybe, she thinks, there’s something she should be seeking.

 

~

 

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Johnson says. “I don’t think she’s real. That’s my professional opinion. I think it’s an elaborate hallucination.”

Steve, who has witnessed Bucky’s night terrors in person, who has seen his friend’s tears, who has heard his voice rasping in the night for someone, anyone, to please help him, disagrees. Because mostly there are two people he calls out for: Steve himself, and the girl who Dr. Johnson says is not real.

It was when Steve heard Bucky begging for her right alongside himself that he decided to believe Bucky. Because, at one point or another, Steve hadn’t been real for Bucky. Bucky remembers more, knows more, than people think.

“I disagree,” Steve makes his opinion known.

And besides, if Steve didn’t take a stand and fight on Bucky’s side, then he wouldn’t be Steve Rogers at all.

Everyone in the room stifles a groan as he starts arguing on Bucky’s behalf.

It goes on for much too long. Especially considering the person in question wasn’t even in the room. Eventually Steve stands and glares down at the table of supposed medical experts. “We’re going to look for her.”

“You’re fueling the delusion-,”

“No. I’m not. Not if she’s real, which I think she is.” Before they can interrupt he continues, “And Bucky used to think I wasn’t real. That skinny kid from Brooklyn? He was sure it was a delusion. How is this any different?”

“It is-,”

“How?”

Tony, who had been listening in the corner of the room, stands. He had hired the medical staff and so he insisted on sitting in. “Enough. Rogers knows what’s best for Barnes.”

Steve nods at Tony who rolls his eyes and throws open the door of the conference room, “Dismissed!”

Everyone shuffles around, gathering papers and themselves, everyone’s tempers a little flared.

The super soldier doesn’t even pause as he marches out the door after Tony, seeking out his best friend. It doesn’t take long to find him as Bucky is nearly always in one of three places. His bedroom under as many blankets as humanly possible, in the kitchen riffling through the fridge, or overexerting himself in the gym.

Today he’s in the gym, sweat rolling down his sides and face. “Buck?”

He sets the weights down and turns to face Steve. “What?” His voice is exhausted, “What is it Steve?”

“We’re gonna find your girl.”

Bucky just turns his back to Steve.

They really must think him unstable, to lie about something so important to him.

And anyways, he’s starting to believe them. The woman is a lie, fake, an elaborate imagination. He’s tired of being ridiculed, he’s tired of living in the past, and if the woman isn’t real, if she’s a hallucination then he will stop bringing it up, stop asking after her and talking about her.

He wants to be better and leave the past behind. Bucky doesn’t need a ghost following him. There are already too many.

They’re right, he decides in that moment as he ignores Steve, she isn’t real.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! ❤️❤️❤️
> 
> Let me know what you think!

Someone kicks her in the ribs. “Get up,” a voice hisses. “Now. _Get up_!”

Slowly, she rises from the floor, meeting the hard eyes of a guard. He holds a gun at his side, pointed right into her belly. She’s confused and glances around the cell. She doesn’t really remember them bringing her out of the cold. Thoughts scramble around her head as she tries to remember waking up but she doesn’t.

“We’ve woken the Soldier.” The harsh Russian syllables grate against her ears. She winces as he continues. “And he’s in a rage. We think it’s because you’re missing.” It would be the first time they hadn’t called on her to help wake him up. “And I don’t really give a fuck if he rips you to shreds as long as he calms down.”

A hand wraps around her upper arm and she’s forced out the cell door and down a corridor. She blinks hard against the light. He won’t remember her again. Or he _would_ technically, but not in the traditional sense. A lick of jealousy lashes against her heart. He got to forget everything while they forced her to remember.

But then she hears him screaming in her mind, and thinks about the torture that’s been inflicted on both of them, and that he’s practically lost all sense of self, and she feels guilty. He remembers; flinches at touch, recoils at the sound of his own name, but he knows her somehow.

She’s forced through another door after a few minutes of walking down derelict corridors and faced with chaos.

His dark hair is long, his shirt missing, raised red lashes score his back. The metal arm whirs and clenches, mirroring the muscle of the flesh one. The room is in disarray, tables and machinery overturned, something spilt across the floor, trays of instruments scattered. Worst of all is the blood, there seems to be quite a lot. 

A man steps up to her, presses his mouth to her ear as he whispers instructions to her, instructions she can’t disobey. The few scientists and guards and agents start to leave the room causing the Soldier to turn toward her.

He’s on her immediately, body protectively in front of hers as everyone files out of the room. When they’re gone he relaxes a little but not by much, murmuring into her hair so lowly she can’t make out what he’s saying.

Stepping away from him, she gives him an order to sit down, which he does immediately. She steps behind where he sits on a hard chair and assesses the damage done to his back. “Why?” she grunts, choosing Russian for the moment.

“I didn’t see you,” he says, voice just as hard. "You're supposed to be here. You're _mine."_ The Soldier's voice is possessive and angry. 

She doesn't know how he always manages to know that, that she would always be there to meet him on the other side of the cold.

“Mm.” She tangles her hand in his hair and tips his head back with a violent reprimanding tug. “Behave,” her voice is authoritative. A small whine escapes him at the harshness in her tone and the grip on his hair. “I’m sorry.” Her voice softens along with her hand. “You must listen to them.” Slowly she runs her fingers against his scalp.

His hand reaches back to circle her wrist. “ _Nie byłeś tutaj_.” Instead of angry, now he sounds worried, desperate.

_You were not here._

Instead of answering him she releases her hold on him and begins searching through the disarray for a medical kit, righting one of the fallen tables with little effort. “1968.” She whispers, bracing herself for his undoubtedly aggressive reaction.

“Stop.”

“Bucky.”

“Stop it.”

“James Barnes.”

“ _Stop it_.”

“March 17th-,”

He slams her against the wall, “Shut up.” She hadn't even known he had moved, fingers clenching around her throat as he pins her against the concrete wall. As the years had gone on Bucky had gotten more and more irritable and violent when presented with his identity. It seemed to cause almost physical pain.

Metal fingers further tighten around her throat. “Do not.”

She's not afraid and undeterred. “Let me go.” Her voice scrapes in her throat before he releases her. For a moment they stare at each other before he grabs her shoulders and smashes his lips to hers, the kiss is unforgiving and hard. It's a thing of confusion and misplaced emotion. But that's what she's there for. The Soldier’s teeth clamp down on her bottom lip, drawing blood, as her hands go to his biceps, trying to calm him. Gently, her thumbs smooth circles there and he calms slightly. He grips her chin in his hand until she bruises before shoving her away. “Help me.” Desperation has returned to his tone. "Please."

“Sit down.”

He sits on the table that she had righted earlier before she goes about cleaning the violent stripes on his back. They’d heal soon enough but she still wraps them, and tends to his other injuries, self-inflicted and given to him as they tried to contain the Soldier’s rage.

Because the programming, if his emotions were strong enough, a memory powerful enough, could be overridden. And clearly coming out of the cold, out of cryo, with her missing had had enough of an emotional affect that it triggered a response.

“ _Mój_ ,” He growls again, needing it to be true. “ _Jesteś mój_.”

 _Mine. You are mine_.

“ _Tak_.” She agrees this time.

He’s silent for a while, letting her work over him. Every so often she whispers his name, with little to no reaction from him. It hurts her to think he might have lost himself completely. His once kind blue eyes are distant, his soul fortified behind his pale irises.

“ _Pocałuj mnie znowu_.”

_Kiss me again._

She shakes her head. “ _Nie_.” The woman steps back from him and pouts her bottom lip for him to see her bloody bitten lip, before craning her neck to show the bruise forming there. “ _Ranisz mnie._ ”

_You hurt me._

“I want you,” he replies in English. “I know you.” A grave tinge enters his voice, “Please.”

“No.”

He doesn’t give her a choice as he stands and backs her into a corner. When she stumbles he stops. “I won’t hurt you. Protect, remember?”

“Do _you_ remember?”

“ _Tak_.” The Soldier thinks he should protect her, that much he remembers. He remembers for a moment wrapping his pinky around hers and whispering, _I promise_. “Protect.”

He’s had her before, many times, to calm him, and so she says, “Okay,” eyes trained on his jumpy fingers. The Soldier grabs her and sets her on the table he had just been occupying. She’s wearing a tattered dress and so all he has to do is pull down her underwear.

His hands cup her neck gently as he presses a surprisingly soft kiss to her lips. She buries her face against his neck, legs pulling him closer to her. She knows they'll be watching them and feels a twitch of shame.

“Do you want-,” The Soldier asks, preparing to go to his knees without order. 

“No,” she says breathlessly. “Just you.”

Instead of doing _exactly_ as she asks he kisses her, slowly, to contrast his behavior earlier. “I’ll behave now.”

“Good.”

He grinds his hips into hers. “For you. So you don’t get punished.”

“Do you know my name?” She asks quietly, lips pressing alone his neck, as he hooks his hands around her thighs.

“No.” He pauses. “But I know you. I know you.”

She whispers her name to him and he whispers it back reverently. “You’ll do well on the mission won’t you?” She asks of him, because it's her job.

“Yes,” he whispers, connecting his mouth to hers. “I will.” She breathes a sigh of relief. If he ever fails a mission, which is hardly ever, she’s punished most severely for it. He pulls back and unzips his pants, just enough to pull his cock out, and presses himself to her entrance.

It’s still for half a second before he slams into her. She lies back against the table, his hands make an iron grip on her hips. The pace he sets is brutal and unforgiving, his hips snapping sharply against hers. Neither of them make noise but her cheeks heat in embarrassment. Someone is watching, evaluating, and this will come up. She'll likely be punished even though it effectively calmed the beast. 

But she wants it and the Soldier wants it and they both crave the closeness of it and the bond it creates between them. And that will be the problem. They aren't supposed to feel and yet...

His pace slows slightly as he removes his hands from her hips to pull her up. Carefully, he cradles her back with large hands, pressing her chest to his.

She bites his shoulder hard, pleasure coursing through her when his thrusts slow and the heavy drag of him against her walls becomes too much, she stifles a scream, drawing blood and tasting the sharpness of it on her tongue. He comes before she does, spilling himself inside her.

All it takes after that is the flick of his thumb over her clit before her body clenches around him. The Soldier cradles her to his chest, keeping them connect for a moment longer. “I’ll do well. They won’t hurt you.”

It’s exactly what she hears every time they beat her. The Soldier promised and they still hurt her because they could. She lets him pull out of her before she pulls her panties back on, his come still dripping from her. It didn't matter, they had taken care of that problem long ago.

After the mission of course, she’s reprimanded with corporal punishment, because the Soldier is showing signs of emotion again. He’s supposed to be emotionless and although she can’t help the bond they have, in fact one fostered between them by the agents, they still blame her. Every. Single. Time.

They put the Soldier away, letting him witness the abuse beforehand. They let him scream and rail against them, watch Bucky Barnes flicker to life in his eyes, with remorseless mirth in theirs. And then the wipe him away again, silence his soul once more.

And then they put her away too.

And they do it all again the next time.

 

~

 

Bucky wakes in a cold sweat. Her face is so clear in his mind, her eyes especially. She can’t be imagined can she?

But she is. And he’s sadistic for wanting to have had someone there with him, experiencing the same pain.

It feels real. It feels like it happened. The emotions are palpable. His chest hurts, and so does his throat. When his bedroom door opens and Steve pokes his head in Bucky knows he was screaming.

“Bucky-,”

“Leave it, Steve,” he says gruffly, turning on his side and away from the door. “Just leave it. Leave me alone.”

Steve sighs, “You were shouting for her again.”

“Well they were taking her from me again.” He’s aware he sounds like a child but can’t be bothered to care. _Not real, not real, not real_. “No. It was just a dream.”

For a moment it’s silent and then Steve sighs again and closes the door with a snap. He lies down next to Bucky in bed, who is grateful for the company even if he doesn’t say it. “Bucky, we’ve been looking into her existence. We’ve been trying to find some record of her.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and Natasha, and Tony when he’s in the mood.”

A little bit of hope enters him, “And?”

“Nothing yet. But it’s only been a few weeks and Hydra goes deep.” Steve says as Bucky attempts to move closer without Steve noticing. There have been few people he’s been close to, physically and otherwise, and the heat radiating from his friend’s body is addictive. Natasha stays with him sometimes, the assassin sleeping in a small curled ball a respectable distance away in his bed.

Steve notices Bucky moving closer, but he doesn’t say anything. He knows it’s hard for Bucky to feel warm, even despite his unnaturally warm room and many blankets. “You won’t find anything if she’s not real.”

“Why do you suddenly think she isn’t real? You were adamant about it. You came to life when you talked about her.”

“Well when it’s being shoved down my throat every day that I’m crazy and delusional, maybe I've started to believe it.” Bucky shrugs as though it doesn’t matter, shifting restlessly in bed. He doesn’t really have anything left to say other than for Steve to let him know if they find anything.

And then he carefully lies his head against Steve’s shoulder, his forehead pressed against the side of it. 

Steve still doesn’t say anything as he wishes he could take Bucky’s pain away.

“If she was real,” he whispers to Steve, “She’s probably dead or worse.”

And Steve doesn’t need to guess what Bucky means by ‘or worse’. Or worse implied she might still be with Hydra.

If that's the case Steve doesn't know what they're going to do.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think! <3
> 
> Also, if you're interested, here's my [Tumblr](http://smokeandmirrorscloakanddagger.tumblr.com/)

Her eyes rove over the screen in front of her as her heart stalls in her chest. Something about this presentation makes her feel like she can’t breathe.

The lecture hall isn’t that large but all the seats are filled. Claustrophobia and anxiety starts to settle over her, feeling as though the walls might cave in and bury her at any time. She had decided to take American History this semester and was now seriously starting to doubt her sanity. The faces staring down at her seem all too familiar, eerily so, almost as though she knows them. Or, more accurately, one of them.

They’re studying America’s impact on World War II and she’s starting to feel vaguely sick. But the professor seems to have some sort of extreme interest in the Howling Commandos, and so he just keeps droning on and on and on. She wishes he’d just take their fucking picture off the goddamn screen.

When class is finally over she’s the first to bolt out of the room. She knows where that man is from. James Buchanan Barnes. He’s the man that haunts every dream she’s ever had.

At least now she knows that she’s going crazy.

When she gets back to her apartment she rushes to the bathroom and empties the contents of her stomach into the toilet, retching until noting comes up. Something inside her is stirring, pressing, howling to get out. She wishes she knew what it all meant, why she’s struggling so much, why that man isn’t only familiar to her but _important_.

She slumps onto the floor and passes out, a memory or a dream shining in her mind.

It’s cold. There’s a man talking about a train.

 

~

 

“Hey,” Bucky says, head lolling back against the wall, lanky legs spread out in front of him. “You okay?”

Her clothes are different, her dress having been swapped for a t-shirt and trousers. But her feet are still bare against the cold floor and he hates them for that.

They’ve been moved, no longer in their old cell. She’s retrieved at all hours of the day and night as the scientists try and sort out her sickness. “Fine.” Her English had improved incredibly in recent weeks and Bucky attributes it to whatever they’re doing to her to fix the sickness, whatever they’re injecting her with. He hopes they figure it out soon, though something tells him it might take a while.

Their new cell is separated by bars and she makes sure to sit as close to them as possible just like Bucky is. They seem to want to limit their contact while simultaneously keeping them together. “I’m okay. I have something for you.”

He frowns, “You have something for me?”

She nods and pulls it from beneath her shirt. Bread and a small piece of meat. In short, a miracle. “For you.” The look on her face tells him she’s quite proud of herself for finding something so unattainable.

Bucky smiles wide, excitement in his voice, “Where’d you get that?”

“I took it. From table. They did not see.” She smiles back, “We share?”

“Yeah, yeah, this is great.” He can’t keep the smile off of his face. “You’ll haveta split it up though doll. I’m useless with one arm.”

Carefully she splits the food evenly before passing it through bars. “Are you okay?”

He nods, taking a bite and chewing slowly. Bucky groans, “This is fuckin’ delicious.” It reality its cold meat and hard bread but she think the same. It’s the best thing she’s ever tasted. She sticks her hand through the bars and pats his shoulder, lets her hand rest there for a second against the skin of his neck. “Thanks for this. They could have seen you though.”

“I do not care.” Her fingers go to her own neck and tug free his dog tags. She examines them as they twist through her fingers. “I do not care. They will hurt me anyways. And you haven’t eaten.”

Her concern warms his heart. “You haven’t eaten either.” They carefully controlled their food intake to keep them as weak as possible without killing them. “Are your feet cold?”

“A little,” she says sadly as she glances down at her feet.

Bucky scarfs down the rest of his food even though he knows doing so will probably make him sick. Then he carefully reaches down and pulls off his socks, and tries to pass them through the bars. “Take ‘em.”

“No,” she looks horrified at the prospect. “Then you will be cold.”

“I’ll be fine. Please take ‘em…you’re turnin’ blue.”

A frown creases her forehead before she takes them from him, her fingers brushing against his. “We will take turns.”

They won’t, he thinks. Bucky won’t take them back, but he still nods so as to make it easier for her. He watches her stiff fingers twitch and struggle to get the socks up before she sighs and rubs her feet through the thick wool. “Thank you, Bucky.”

“ _Dla Ciebie wszystko_.”

 _Anything for you_.

She smiles and reaches through the bars again to lie a gentle hand against his face. Her fingers are ice cold but Bucky doesn’t pull away. “One day, when this is over I will take you home with me. We’ll meet my parents and I’ll show you the town I lived in. And then we’ll go down to the city and you can look for the prettiest girl.”

Bucky doesn’t have any reason to look for a pretty girl, not when she’s sitting in front of him. But he had told her stories about taking girls dancing, and the other ordinary things he had once done and taken for granted. So, he just nods at her, small smile still creasing his face.

“I’ll show ya Brooklyn, doll. You’ll love New York. It’s got somethin’ for everyone. In fact, I bet if we looked we’d find a Polish place or two.”

“Polish place in America?” She asks bewilderedly. “How?”

He smirks and turns his head to the side against her slowly warming hand, placing a soft kiss against her palm. “We got what they call a melting pot.” When he chuckles at her confused look she taps her fingers against his lips impatiently. “Means we have everybody in New York City, all walks of life. In my neighborhood alone we had Italians and Irish, which if you know anything you’ll know that ain’t a good combination. We got the French and the Jews and some Czechs, and Germans even. I’m sure we could find a few Poles too.”

The girl looks away from the laughing blue eyes, down to the dog tags resting against her throat. “America sounds nice. Do they get along? We have all these people and look what happens.” Her voice drops low, “We hurt each other so badly here.”

“Well I think it’ll be a little bit like that anywhere ya go. ‘Course some people at home don’t like the mixed bag but…hey, a lotta us do, me included.” He reaches up and takes her hand from his cheek. “Things will get better someday.” She still looks melancholy though, seemingly somewhere else in her mind and so he squeezes her hand a little harder than he should and asks, “Are your toes warmer now?” When she doesn’t answer he adds, “I think I’d like to see your home one day.”

“Yes my toes are better,” she murmurs. And then a few minutes later, she whispers thickly, “And one day you will see my home.”

Something is still bothering her though and Bucky decides to keep his trap shut in case she’s starting to feel sick again.

Maybe an hour passes before she takes her hand away from his face and lets his hand slip away from hers. With her other hand she had been twirling his tags between her fingers, examining them. Those too she lets slip away with a small clink. Instead she curls her fingers in the collar of his shirt and tugs him closer until they’re nose to nose through the metal bars. “What does P mean?”

“P?”

“Everything else on the necklace makes sense. Name, birthday, number. What does P mean?”

He swallows hard. “Why does it matter?”

“I think it is why you gave them to me.” Her eyes are intense. “Is it dangerous? Have you put me in danger?” She had known they were before, otherwise they wouldn’t have been handed off but now she needed to know. Identification is important. It can save your life or get you killed.

Bucky’s chest is tight, his mouth a tight line. “Means Protestant, doll.”

Her brows furrow, “Strongly convicted?”

“No.”

The knot in her stomach loosens a little. “Then it is not unsafe.” She tilts her head to the side, “So why do I hide them?”

He’s afraid to tell her. She might hate him, she might-

“Because that isn’t all I am.” He doesn’t even lift his eyes when he says it, can’t believe he just blurted it out. He keeps his head down, starting at the dirty floor.

“Oh…” Judging by her tone, it sounds as though she’s understood. “Bucky?” It takes several long minutes for him to look up at her. When he does, she’s frowning. “I don’t care. Why should I care? What does it matter now?”

Something in his chest seizes and he rips away from her, tearing her hand from his shirt. “But you would have cared before?”

“No.” She states matter-of-factly. “I would not have cared. My neighbors were Polish but also Jewish. I played with their daughters. Their mother was a friend of my mother. My grandmother was Jewish. She married a Catholic and converted because she loved him. It doesn’t matter. You are the only friend I have left in the world now. I don’t care what you are. Now or before or anytime.”

And then she does the strangest, most incredible and mundane thing anyone has ever done to him. She grabs his shirt again, pulls him in close and kisses him full on the mouth through the bars of their cells.

Its heart stopping and horrifying and wonderful and panic inducing and he loves it. Her nose bumps into his cheek as they break off with a gasp. He never wants to stop kissing her and so he murmurs, “I’ll never let them make me forget you. I’ll always know you. And one day I’ll follow you wherever you go. We’ll go to your home and mine and things will be better.”

She nods and doesn’t think it’s true even if it’s a nice thought. So she just kisses him again and again and again. Because he gave her socks and still fought the guards and ran his mouth to them and learned her language and retained his kindness. Because he asked her how she was every time they met even though he already knew the answer. Because he calls her doll when she was anything but.

Eventually she pulls back and murmurs something about sleep. The day’s session had been draining and harrowing and she should prepare for the next round of injections.

They fall asleep with their fingers curled together, sleeping as tightly together as can through a hard metal cage.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading ❤️❤️❤️
> 
> Let me know what you think!!

“Isn’t this a little obsessive?” Kristina asks, glancing around her friend's overcrowded apartment, at all the papers and printouts and pictures. 

The other woman shakes her head and walks away from the front door, pulling her robe tighter around her body. “No. It’s not.”

“Okay. Then come out tonight.” Clearly Kristina wouldn’t take her shit.

“Can’t.”

Kristina rolls her eyes, “And why not?”

She turns and glares at her, “Because anytime I try to leave I’m over whelmed with memories of something I don’t understand and I puke my guts up until my stomach is on fire.” She mutters a string of curses under her breath as Kristina laughs.

“Okay, okay, so you’ve gone a little crazy. But who hasn’t these days?” Kristina puts her hand on her shoulder and immediately pulls it away again as though shocked. “Jesus, you’ve lost weight.”

“I told you that I was sick.” She sniffles and looks around at all her research sprawled around the room. It is starting to look like a conspiracy theorist’s lair. “I’m afraid if I go out he’ll be standing there, waiting for me in the street.”

She can see it clearly in her mind. Walking though the throng of tourists with her arm linked through Kristina’s, laughing at something stupid, when she looks up and the crowd parts and he’s standing there. Black tactical gear, face obscured, gun pointed right at her.

“You’re being ridiculous. The world savior-,” she rolls her eyes dramatically before continuing, “-Captain America has proclaimed to us all that the Winter Soldier is a murderer no longer. So you’re safe even if he does want to kill you.”

She shakes her head and turns to sit down on her small couch. “Either way I’m sick as a dog.”

“Well I guess that’s true,” says Kristina, bouncing on her toes. “But you’re also crazy either way. He was a nightmare for a long time. Someone probably told you a story about him as a kid and it stuck. You’ve never met him. How could you have?”

There’s no explaining to someone that you have no memories beyond a few years before and that you’ve never thought to question it until you saw an ex-Soviet assassin on the news. And only later realized he was the man you were dreaming about even before you saw his picture. There’s no way to explain to someone that the memories you do have of the past, a school, your mother, your father seems false. So, she only sighs, but she doesn’t say Kristina is right. Because she isn’t, she can’t be.

“They’ll come for me.”

“You’re starting to scare me.”

She curls in on herself, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I know. But it’s true. He wants to kill me.” Her heart catches in her chest. “He hates me.” Kristina sits next to her and wraps an arm around her shoulder.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

Something is swirling in her brain again, trying so desperately to get out. But she ignores it, instead curling into Kristina who pats her hair and murmurs something under her breath, her voice calming and smooth.

As much as she tries to stifle the memory it flies to the forefront of her mind anyways. She gasps, pain tearing through her skull. “He hit me,” Kristina’s arms tighten further. “He beat me. I was his plaything.” Her voice transforms then, a deep, black disgust filling her, inking out the pink, tender places in her heart, “And I hate him.”

 

~

 

He’s at a coffee shop, trying to pass as a normal person, which has been going well so far, when something starts to nag at the edge of his consciousness.

Bucky knows he needs to get back to the Tower, and soon. The small itch can very easily turn into a full blown memory, which meant he needed to be somewhere safe and warm. Sometimes the memories made him pass out, other times scream in pain, and either way both of those things terrified the general populace.  

So he reaches forward and tugs on Natasha’s sleeve. “Natalia…” And he must sound sufficiently wrecked already that she forgets about ordering her coffee entirely, takes his hand, and marches them out to the curb where she parked illegally not five minutes before. “I’m sorry,” he says, once safely inside the cool interior of Stark’s horribly expensive car.

Natasha only shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it Barnes. We got though most of my errands anyways.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” he says as she pulls away from the curb to a tune of harsh, irritated honks.

It doesn’t take long to get back to the Tower. But by the time they make it to his room he’s already dizzy and sweating. He thinks Natasha has said something about fetching Steve but he can’t be sure as he collapses onto the bed and curls in on himself. Someone comes into the room and piles blankets around him as Bucky shakes and waits for the memory to takeover, push him away from the reality he knows and make him scream.

_“Soldier-,” her hands are careful as they pull away metal and leather. She sits on a stool next to the chair. “Do you know me?”_

_He recognizes her eyes and so he nods, expression never changing. She’s his. She’ll help him. Electricity still sparks along his skin and in his blood and so he cringes when her fingers find his._

_“This is the last time you’ll see me.”_

_That seems wrong. She should always be with him. “No,” he says, voice harsh and commanding. She only pulls his hand up and kisses his palm. It’s a loving kiss, warm and small, the flutter of her eyelashes felt against the inside of his wrist._

_She pulls back to meet his cold stare. It’s a look she’s accustomed to and it doesn’t frighten her in the slightest. She also knows he doesn’t mean it to be imposing to her, that his expression hides whatever is inside. “It’s unfair but I’m going to ask you to remember me. I want you to remember me. You know me but I want you to_ remember _me.” She swallows and kisses his hand again. “Please. All this suffering can’t mean nothing. We can’t mean nothing. Please remember me. You’re the only one left that can. You're the only person left in the world who knows me.”_

_Again he murmurs a 'no' to her. Because she is his and it sounds like she’s saying goodbye. “I’m sorry but, yes. They’re finished with me. My time is up. I don’t know what they’ll do with me but this mission for you is important. And they can’t have me there. My time is up.”_

_“Stay,” he murmurs, a little emotion filtering into his eyes. The woman can’t leave him, she can’t. “Stay.”_

_“Your name is Bucky.” For the first time in decades it doesn’t make him violent. He sits stock still and blinks slowly at her as she continues, trying in vain to give his identity back that she had kept safe for years. A tear tracks down her cheek when he doesn’t respond. “I fell in love with you over the years, you know? We’ve been together a long time and soon I’m going to be buried in a cold grave. And no one will ever know I had existed.”_

_And then the Soldier stirs and says her name. He repeats it several times as she reaches forward and pats his cheek. His eyes never leave hers. She moves her hands down his bare chest, coated with sweat from the exertion the machine inevitably drew from him. It’s almost as though she’s trying to memorize him. Each of her hands go to his biceps as she leans forward and looks him in the eyes. “I love you, Bucky Barnes, and I will forever be sorry about your fate. You never deserved this.”_

_On instinct he leans his forehead into hers, not sure why it mattered. “Don’t go.” Something breaks then and his voice cracks when he whispers, “Don’t leave me alone.”_

_“You won’t be alone for long, Bucky. I know how you hate the dark but I think the light is finally coming to swallow you back up.”_

_He moves his metal arm, shaking off her hand, to press his hand to the back of her neck, keeping her in place, “Not without you.” The words feel bad on his tongue, something bad was coming. “Please.”_

_“You’ll be alright,” she whispers. “Your friend is coming.”_

_It makes no sense to the Soldier. He only has her. And she’s leaving him alone in the dark with nothing but pain and punishment for company._

_He jolts in confusion and surprise when her lips press to his. He doesn’t kiss her back, unsure what to do, when the agents march in. Hurriedly she takes his hand and presses one more lasting kiss to his palm._

_She’s yanked away from him as someone snaps the metal back in place over his arm. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Bucky! I’m sorry. I-,” Someone gives a pointed hit to her temple and she’s knocked out, dragged from the room._

 

~

 

When he comes to, Steve is sleeping soundly next to him, Natasha sprawled on a plush chair in the corner of the room. His mouth is as dry as a desert, he’s shivering even as he sweats, and his head aches dully. He rolls over and shakes Steve awake.

“Buck,” Steve voice slurs as he rubs his eyes and sits up. “What is it? Are you okay?”

“They took her, Steve, right before I was sent to-to get you. They didn’t kill her, I know they didn’t. She-,” he pauses and swallows hard. “They took her memories but, she must have escaped.”

“How do you know they don’t still have her-,”

Bucky shakes his head as though Steve is the densest person he’s ever spoken to. “She would have come for me by now if they did.”

“She couldn’t possibly take you on. I barely could-,”

“Doesn’t matter.” Steve opens his mouth to ask why when Bucky answers his unspoken question. “She wouldn't have had to fight me. Because I would have followed her.”

There’s a pregnant pause as Natasha continues to snore lightly. “How do we find her?” Bucky asks, voice desperate. Their task seems impossible, undoable. “How do we find her when that’s all I have to go on?”

Steve stands and pulls Bucky to his feet, “C’mon.” He follows reluctantly after Steve, only pausing to tuck a blanket around Nat and kiss her cheek.

They end up in the kitchen where Steve starts a pot of tea on the stove. He forces Bucky to sit down and then goes to the living room to fetch a blanket when Bucky starts to shiver again. When the tea is finished and they both have a mug Steve sits across from Bucky and says, “Okay lets think about this-,”

“Why did we need tea to think?” He murmurs staring into his cup.

Steve rolls his eyes, “It’s warm and supposedly comforting.”

“Are you comforted?”

He stares at Bucky for a second. “Yeah. I have tea and you.”

“Okay.”

Bucky is at times hard to help. This seems to be one of those times, as he's resistant to coddling and kindness. “Jesus Christ, Buck. Do you wanna find this damn girl or not?”

His head snaps up, rage now flowing off his body in thick waves. “Do not-,”

“I think we should think about it in terms of you,” Steve interrupts before Bucky can get worked up.

A frown etches itself onto his face, “What do you mean?”

“Why did you go to Romania?”

Safety.

He had went there because it seemed safe and when it proved to be he had stayed there. “Safe.”

“And?”

“Familiar. A bit isolated.”

“So she would want to be somewhere similar right?”

Bucky shrugs. He honestly has no idea and all of their digging through files for weeks and weeks and weeks had yielded them nothing. “Maybe.” Then, he glances back at Steve, eyes wide.

“What?”

“Poland.”

Steve mulls it over for a moment as he takes long sips of tea from his mug, while Bucky uses his more as a warming device for his hand as he holds it to his chest. “Do you really think it would be that easy?”

No, he doesn’t. But it’s their best shot and he tells Steve as much. “It was such a big part of her identity…I _know_ that. She would feel safe there.” Bucky thinks about the war then and the terrible things that happened there and sighs, “Or maybe not.”

“It’s a start, Buck,” Steve says gently. “That’s what’s important. We’ll start in Poland. We’ll see if there are records to search there. And we’ll see if Tony can go start searching security cameras in Eastern Europe.”

It still feels like it isn’t good enough.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Finding her had actually been easier than they thought. When they stopped looking in paper files and started examining videos, they had found her. Based on a sketch of her from Bucky’s memory done by Steve, they had used facial recognition on security camera videos.

She had been right there the whole time, roaming the streets of Prague. After that finding her faked record hadn’t been hard.

“Nadiya Kijek.” Tony says spinning around on his chair. “That’s her name.” He pauses for a second, “What are the chances that this is a totally normal person that you’re about to ambush?”

Steve glances at Bucky, whose eyes haven’t moved away from the screen. A screen shot from security footage in Prague showed her leaving a department store with a friend. Her face is clear and open, not someone who’s hiding from anyone, worried where their face might show up or who might be watching. “I don’t know.”

Tony stares at him, “I mean-,” he spins to look at the picture again. “She doesn’t exactly look like a tortured, ex-Hydra, Winter Soldier whisperer does she?”

“Why would she?” Bucky asks quietly, stepping closer to the screen. “They made her forget. And her name isn’t Nadiya Kijek.” This last part seems to insight some deep fury within him.

“I thought you said her curse was to remember?” Tony asks exasperatedly.

Bucky glares at him, “Before.”

“Right, of course. _Before_.” Tony says with a roll of his eyes.

“Alright,” Steve reprimands, stepping between the two of them before it can escalate. Silence settles over the group, Natasha having never even opened her mouth in the first place. But he has to admit, the chances aren’t good. “Buck? Are you sure?”

He nods, eyes light with hope and dark with determination. “It’s her.”

“Okay, let’s say this is her." Tony starts. "Obviously she’s forgotten whatever they did to her or she’d be trying to hide. That means they probably implanted false memories and I can’t imagine they’re good ones of the iceman, if there are any at all of him.”

Something like a growl leaves Bucky. “She’ll know me.”

Tony rolls his eyes again, Natasha looks doubtful, and Steve can only support his friend. When they find her he doesn’t know what they’ll do. They don’t have much of a plan but one thing is for sure: they’re headed to Prague.

And soon.

 

~

 

“Target sighted.”

Bucky glares into the newspaper in his hands, angry that Steve had called her a target through the comms.

Wanda and Natasha are a few tables down from him at the small café, drinking cappuccinos and pretending to whisper together. He can’t see Steve but he must be around because Bucky sees her too. She and the friend from the department store video walk up to the café counter in the cool morning sunshine. By afternoon it would be cloudy once more, the city darkening with moodiness every so often.

Bucky’s mood is dark as he watches her smile tightly at the man behind the counter, the jostle of tourists cutting off his view of her every so often. With the friend present everything changed. He hates the girl fiercely suddenly.

“Calm down. We can’t do anything anyways, Barnes.” Natasha’s voice filters over the comms. “Not yet.”

“She needs to know the truth, Natasha,” he mutters under his breath. He’s not worried about protocol. He isn’t worried about waiting for a signal.

The friend suddenly breaks away from her, taking her to-go coffee and waving a small goodbye as 'Nadiya' gets a table to herself. Bucky stands.

“Buck, no-,” he rips the device out of his ear and makes a beeline to her. She’s alone, she’s his, he can convince her. Convince her of what, he’s not sure.  

Once at her table he sits down across from her and waits for her to glance up. When she does she smiles for half a second at the stranger at her table, before she recognizes him and snaps her mouth shut.

She opens her mouth, horror on her face. “Don’t scream, please,” Bucky pleads. “Please listen to me. Please let me explain.”

For a moment she just stares at him, pure fear radiating from her, terror written over her face. And then she darts, and she’s fucking fast. She shoves the table hard, hitting him in the gut and is gone in a second. And the Winter Soldier is actually in pain, breathless.

But she runs into Steve but she makes it past him with quick jabs and a hard shove to the shoulder. She’s strong and fast and nothing in his memory had indicated that she was. Bucky runs after her but she’s soon surrounded, Sam drifting down from a roof, Natasha and Wanda circling closer, as Steve catches his breath and meets them.

The capture isn’t a part of the plan, but neither is the fighting. Neither is her strength, her willingness to get away.

It’s over almost as soon as it starts, but it’s violent and horrible. And she screams and curses in every language she knows. She struggles and spits and howls.

The screams are by far the worst, sounding exactly the way they had before when they had been locked together and tortured. Even worse is the silence that follows when she’s finally subdued.  

The plane ride home is dead silent as well. No one seems to know what to do or say.

 

~

 

They keep her isolated.

She won’t eat.

She loses weight and fights anyone who enters what can only be described as her cell.

After a week she has to be subdued again and given a nutritional IV. This happens every few days to keep her alive and healthy for the most part. They won’t let Bucky see her which means he spends all of his time pleading his case or watching her on the security cameras.

She’s terrified, cornered, and alone. Bucky knows exactly how she feels and so when three weeks have passed and everyone but himself has been in to see her, they finally decide to let Bucky try.

As a peace offering he brings her food. It’s not much, a bottle of water and some fruit, something easy on her empty stomach. The door to her room hisses open and her eyes dart to the door from where she’s sitting in the corner of the room. Bucky frowns at the temperature of the room and shivers as the door closes behind him. He would bet the cold bothers her just as much as it does him.

She looks at him with something close to real terror in her eyes and so he sits as far away as possible from her, on the other side of her small concrete cell. It’s meant to be an interrogation room and even though there’s no two-way mirror he knows they’re being watched.

“Hi,” he says quietly. “I don’t know if you remember me. But I’m Bucky, we used to…we used to be held by Hydra together.” When she only stares at him he whispers her name in desperation. "Please talk to me." 

That gets her attention, makes her whip her head around. Something about the plea seems to have triggered a response. He half remembers saying it once before. “That is not my name.” Her voice is rough, strained. “My name is Nadiya, Nadiya Kijek.”

“That isn’t true. It’s a false identity.” He repeats her name.

She shakes her head. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anything you say.” He opens his mouth when she suddenly shouts, “You kidnaped me and took me from my home and locked me in this fucking room! Why would I believe anything you people say?”

Bucky says her full name. She cringes away again, seemingly in pain. “You’re from Poland. Your memories are limited like mine, am I right? Sometimes things come to you and it hurts. You pass out or scream or get sick. But it always feels more real than that other shit floating around your brain, am I right?”

Instead of giving him an inch she lifts her chin and says, “I’m not from Poland.”

“Then why are we speaking Polish right now?”

She snaps her mouth shut, confused. She hadn’t realized. Her heart starts to hammer. “I don’t know,” she whispers, terrified of the flimsy memories swimming in her mind. Of a metal fist raised against her, a harsh laugh, a wild lash against her spine.

“Where did you learn it?”

“Why do you care?” she counters. “Why won’t you leave me alone? They hurt you but you hurt _me_. And I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go home.” She squeezes her eyes shut and sees a flaming village, “I want to go _home_. Why can't I go home?”

The crack in her voice shatters his heart. “I want to go home too.” She looks up. “You have to believe me. I never hurt you. Why would I?”

“Then why didn’t you protect me?” She asks, anger shifting in her tone. Her accusation startles, makes his heart jump painfully in his chest. “You were a soldier. I was just some fucking civilian they found! You should have protected me! They forced me to be with you!” Bucky can tell by the way that she sways against the wall that she’s remembering this in real time and shouting it at him as she remembers. “They forced me in a cell with you! They said to me that we’d be together a lot and that I’d better just accept it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want _you._ Some broken American soldier.”

She pauses as Bucky tries to control the panic attack sneaking up on him. “Do you know what they were doing to me before they forced me in there with you? I’d been in the facility a few days already.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Do you know what they did to me?!” Her voice raises to a hysterical pitch. “Do you?! Passing me around like-like-like some half-smoked cigarette.”

With a shake of his head he says, anger and a deep resounding hatred flaring in his gut, “You weren’t the only one. I’m sorry.”

“The only what?” She seethes.

“The only one they raped. Everything they did to you, they did to me too.”

She sucks in a harsh breath before she starts to shake, curling into the wall behind her. “I want to go home, Bucky.”

He figures the use of his name is a good sign and moves a little closer. “I’m trying to bring you home. Will you let me take you home? They can help you here. They’ve helped me. We can help you.”

“Will you leave me again?” Her voice breaks, conflicting, confused thoughts passing though her mind.

“No.”

The line of her shoulders is loosening, calmness filling her bones. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“That’s okay. You can come upstairs with me. They have hot food and a bath and beds.”

She examines him with suspicion. “Will you hurt me?”

“No,” he’s adamant. “I won't. I didn’t hurt you, not even on command. But you never believed that in the first place did you?”

She hadn’t, or at least she had been doubtful. But she still feels as though he played a part in the thieving of her life. He’s the only person from her memories though, that she knows.

An image comes to her suddenly. The Soldier is on one knee, looking up at her as he holds out a small buttercup he had picked just for her. She had whispered her thanks, the expression on his face never changing as he stood and marched across the field toward their target’s burning car.

“You will take me home?”

“I promised you a long time ago that we would go home.” He pauses and swallows. “I’m just keeping a promise.” When she doesn’t respond again, just stares longingly at the food, Bucky pushes forward, gauging her reaction to him coming so close to her. “Do you want something to eat?”

She nods and reaches for the container of fruit, not bothering with the fork and picking it out with her fingers. Bucky sits by and waits for her to finish before giving her the bottle of water. “Better?”

A nod. “You’ll stay with me? I had to leave you once before.” Confusion masks her face. She wants to trust him but doesn’t know if she should. She doesn’t know what to believe.

Bucky reaches out and puts his hand over hers. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry we scared you so bad, doll.”

 _Doll_. Now that was familiar. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“They thought I would make things worse. They thought I might make you violent.”

She grips his hand back and looks to the door. “What did they do to you?” She yanks him closer and tries to examine him for hidden injuries. "Have they hurt you? Why did-,"

“No, no, they aren’t like that. They aren't Hydra.” Bucky says. “We won’t keep you here against you will any longer. I wanted to give you a chance to remember me. But I won’t make you stay.”

“I want to know what happened to me.”

Bucky leans forward to put his forehead against hers, the screaming and arguing from before forgotten already. “I do too.”

Her fingers curl against his and she feels closer to home than she has in all her time searching the past two years.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading ❤️❤️❤️❤️ 
> 
> I love your feedback!

She finds her new home tiresome. There are people surrounding her always, she isn’t trusted to be alone for concern of the safety of others and herself. Bucky, the Winter Soldier, doesn’t leave her alone. He’s always hovering and asking her questions, making sure she’s eaten and ensuring that no one has been unkind to her. He even abandons his friends to eat dinner with her in her room, though he says the only people that are truly his friends are the small assassin and the tall blond and that they don’t mind. She won’t admit it to him but she likes that he hovers and questions, finds comfort and safety in his nearness.

Not once does he lose his patience with her obstinacy, in fact he seems to enjoy the fact that she wants him near. Someone mentions that it may be unhealthy for them to spend so much time alone together and so, a week into staying at the horrible cold, metal and steel Tower, she decides to stop speaking English, to prevent them from attempting to separate them. And because Bucky is the only other person that speaks Polish he’s made to be her translator.

They hire a real translator the next week and force Bucky away from her, ruining her plan. A heated debate ensues in which Captain America takes Bucky’s side, and so does the man with wings and the small assassin. Another woman, she thinks the witch, agrees with them also. She says they have a positive influence on each other’s moods, that she can _see_ it. The therapist still disagrees and so she wins. So, she stops speaking altogether, besides the occasional Czech word that no one, not even Bucky, understands.

Another meeting takes place, she eavesdrops for the second time, and the witch doesn’t rat her out again. She thinks she and the witch might be becoming friends. The translator is fired and Bucky stays by her side again. It’s better after that. Because even though she isn’t sure what to think about him, she knows he’s the only person she trusts to be near her. The translator, a man with dark eyes, had made her nervous.

Steve notices right away that his best friend seems to do better with her around. He isn’t as closed off, takes it upon himself to introduce her to the team and soothe away some of her anxiety around them. He tries to get them to interact with each other. But she doesn’t trust anyone, sticks to Bucky like a bee to honey, wide eyes tracking everyone’s movements with suspicion.

Bucky loves having her around. He doesn’t feel so different, so lonely and odd and alien. There’s suddenly someone around who intimately understands what it is he had been through, even if a lot of it is confused for her at the moment. The therapist, who Bucky now has to translate for, has said she's mixing implanted memories and repressed ones. In short, Hydra had tried to make her forget what really happened. And then they had layered two sets of false memories. The first layer was her fake, normal life, and the second a brutalized picture of the Winter Soldier. Just confusing and similar enough that it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t, in case the first layer of memories ever broke down.

Or, at least, that’s the general theory. No one is completely sure and it’s likely they never will be.

A routine develops between them, starting with Bucky retrieving her from her rooms every morning and the two of the taking a walk together. Usually they would speak in quiet voices about similar things they remembered. It’s peaceful, if a little morbid. The rest of the day is spent with her silently shadowing Bucky and speaking to various therapists and medical teams.

She’s been staying with them for maybe a month when something changes.

He senses a presence in his room before his eyes are even open, it’s probably what wakes him up in the first place. Steeling himself for what he’s about to see he rolls over and opens his eyes.

“Bucky,” she says by way of greeting him. Her eyes are downcast, hands folded on her lap where she sits at the edge of his bed. She’s wearing a t-shirt he thinks is his, and he frowns because he isn’t sure where she might have gotten it or found the time to steal it when they were always together. Her thighs are bare, the expanse of smooth flesh exposed and covered in goosebumps. “I want to apologize to you,” she continues when he doesn’t respond, only stares at her strong thighs.

He looks up at her as her hands flutter nervously in her lap, eyes skirting his. “You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Bucky whispers as he wonders how she got into his and Steve’s apartment.

“But I do. I said terrible things to you in that cell. I said that I didn’t want you with me when we met and that just isn’t true. I was very worried about you when I first saw you. You were hurt and very confused but so was I. I never wished I spoke English before that moment. Do you remember that day?” She questions, meeting his eyes head on.

“Vividly,” he breathes, looking away from her to pick at a loose thread in one of his many blankets. He takes a deep breath and slowly sits up. “I remember that day. I remembered it and now I can’t forget it.” He pauses for a moment, “They told me you weren’t real.”

She blinks. “I’m real.” Then she continues, voice straining and leaping as she tries to push the words out all at once, “At first I was relieved they were leaving me alone but then you spoke and your voice was very kind. I was glad to have you. And I’m sorry I was so mean.” She stays quiet a beat before she says, “I have so many things floating around my brain. And they all seemed to be coming upon me in that moment and…I didn’t know which were real. So, I said what I felt right then. And I was so afraid in that room by myself. Every time the door opened and one of your friends came in I thought they were there to hurt me. And I couldn’t think of what I’d done wrong. I suppose hiding must have been wrong.”

Bucky reaches out and lies once hand over hers. “You didn’t do anything wrong. When they first found me, I was even less willing to talk and more prone to violence. I understood the fear you were feeling. It’s okay. I know you’re confused and afraid, even now.” She shivers in his grasp as her other hand strokes over one of his many blankets. “Do you like it?”

“It’s very soft.” She murmurs, shivering again. “I dreamed about you. That’s why I came. I was worried something happened to you and I needed to check.” Her fingers twist to wrap around his wrist, counting the reassuring beats of his heart. “But you’re here and you’re okay.”

“What happened?”

“They killed you.”

He doesn’t ask for her to elaborate as he doesn’t enjoy it when Steve asks him to do so. “Do you want a blanket?”

Before she can answer he lies back down and opens the pile to her. She releases his wrist and slides next to him as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. Her forehead rests against his collarbone as she tangles her fingers with his. It feels very familiar. It feels good. He thinks about her bare thighs against his sweatpants clad legs and how good it feels to be warm again.

 

 

~

 

The girl is staring at him. Steve tries to ignore her but she hasn’t stopped looking at him from the moment he entered the kitchen.

And then, “Hello, Steve.”

Bucky’s taught him a few words of Polish and so he says, _“Cześć.”_

“How are you?”

Steve is surprised that she’s speaking to him but quickly recovers. Right away he decides he won’t draw attention to the fact that she’s speaking to him at all, or in English. “I’m okay. What about you? Settling in alright?” The coffee pot beeps and he starts to pour himself a cup. She’s still sitting at the kitchen island on a barstool, and is quiet for a very long time. Eerily so, and he turns to make sure she's still there. She is. Staring blankly down at the countertop. “You want some coffee?”

He makes sure to look her in the eyes. “I’m okay. Yes, could I have some coffee?” He pours her a mug full and slides it across the island to her.

“No need to be so formal.” He smiles at her, and she sends him a fractured one back. It's something at least. She's trying.

She tilts her head to the side. “Bucky talked about you, you know.”

Desperately Steve tries to control the rush of emotions that floods him, to keep his face neutral. But it must fail because she reaches over and puts her hand over his. “He waited. When he realized you weren’t coming he said something terrible must have happened to you. That you would have found us if you’d had the chance.”

“We looked,” the words are seemingly pulled from his mouth. “I looked. But it was so far down and-,” He cuts himself off. “What happened? In the beginning?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know how long he was there alone before they brought me to him. Not long. He didn’t have a metal arm yet. That took a while and it took a lot of tests.” She pushes one hand over her face, almost like she’s wiping away the grim coating her memories, trying to get a clearer image. “And he gave me his identity tags. They sparkled, dented but clean.”

“He gave you his dog tags?”

“And I kissed him when he told me why he gave them to me.” Steve watches as she takes a sip of her coffee. “I’m sorry for hitting you in Prague. I was very afraid. I'm still afraid here.”

“It’s okay. Can you tell me a little more?”

As he walks around the island to sit next to her she frowns. “Hasn’t Bucky said anything?”

“He won’t tell me.” Steve had planned on going for a run, but this is better. This is important. “Will you?”

As she nods she bites her lip. “He was always so kind. He learned Polish so quickly. And anytime someone tried to take me he fought tooth and nail.” She smiles, “Once he told me stories all night and day while I was wildly delirious with a fever. He used the water they gave him for drinking to keep me cool. Mostly he told me things about you and…his mother? And sister? _Sisters_?”

With a smile she looks to Steve for confirmation. “Sisters.” She looks victorious for a moment.

Then the grin suddenly disappears, “There were bad things too.” She says this as though what she had said previously hadn’t been bad. “When they found his dog tags on me they couldn’t figure out why he might hide them. Or why I might hide them for him. I was beaten and raped repeatedly in front of him. They wouldn’t let him tell them why. It had to be me.” She says all this dully, as though she’s reading from a newspaper.

He stifles his horror and disgust and asks, “Did you tell them?”

“Eventually they made Bucky tell them. I wasn’t going to say anything, they’d have to kill me first. I’d seen firsthand what happens to his people and they were already so terrible to us. They had figured it out by then but they wanted to hear him say it. He was going to tell them but they made sure to electrocute him first. And then they beat him and then he disappeared for three days. I cried and cried. I thought for sure they’d killed him.” She turns to Steve, lies one hand on his arm, “Please don’t mention this to him. I don’t think he remembers it. I don’t want him to remember it. He never told me what happened while he was gone. He said it was too terrible.”

He agrees and so he nods. “When he was the Winter Soldier-,”

“I don’t want to talk about that.” Her voice is razor sharp and dangerous.

“Do you have trigger words?”

The young woman next to him says nothing for a very long time. “Not exactly. My instinct is to protect the Soldier, that’s all I know. All the discipline disappears if I think he’s in real danger.”

Her hand is still on Steve’s arm when Bucky enters the kitchen, bleary eyed and grumpy. Bucky automatically greets her in Polish and stumbles over to kiss her cheek. “Morning, Stevie,” he says, yawning as he makes his way to the coffee pot.

Something like astonishment threads through Steve as she pats his arm and watches Bucky, a giggle escaping her. She _giggled_. Around anyone but Bucky she’s usually passive and emotionless. She mumbles something else to him which makes Bucky turn and smile, his eyes flick to her hand on Steve’s arm and his smile tightens just a bit before he answers her.

Then he turns to Steve, clearing his voice a little. “How long have you two been up?” Bucky asks.

“Not long,” Steve answers.

“Don’t you usually go running?”

Steve shrugs and looks at him, “We just got to talking.”

Bucky nods and holds out his hand to his girl, murmuring something to her. She nods, a small smile on her face. “Bye, Steve. Thank you for talking to me.”

He nods, a little dazed by the whole experience. He had been convinced that she would never talk to anyone other than Bucky. And then she kisses Steve’s cheek, takes Bucky’s hand, and is gone.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said before this would be a triggering series but I thought I'd give a warning here again. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think! ❤️❤️❤️

“The Soldier remembers her, sir.” One of the technicians whispers when he emerges from the lab. He says nothing about the woman terrified and backed against a wall. The tech is just as terrified of the man as she is. “He’s asking for her. He’s disoriented, confused. We’re calling this one a success.” After five weeks, a blessed success.

Markov doesn’t look at the small, timid man. He only nods and takes a piece of her hair between his fingers, lifting it so he can take a long inhale. Markov grips her chin and forces her to look into his dark eyes. “Of course the Soldier is asking after his _whore_. She’s so good to him. So kind and soft. Let’s him do whatever it is he wants to do without so much as a complaint. Isn’t that right, little bird?” Markov leans closer to her, grips her throat tightly as his other hand skims the inside of her thigh, curling higher and higher along her bare skin.

“You can tell him where all the bruises came from, darling. I’m sure he doesn’t mind sharing.” With a curl of his lip he presses his mouth close to her ear, “Or maybe he does. Maybe he’ll final snap. Or, even better, maybe he’s better than we think and will recognize you for what you are. You like it don’t you, little bird?” He gropes her roughly before laughing. She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

His fingers tighten with anger and then shove her away. She falls backward, back smarting when she hits the floor. The last few weeks have been torture as they tested some way to take Bucky’s memories away. Each day their frustration grew as whatever they attempted didn’t work. She could hear him screaming and begging and pleading for them to stop whatever torture they were inflicting daily, as the guards and tired, stressed scientists alike forced themselves on her again and again and again.

Her thighs hurt and she’s extremely sore from their roughness. She thinks she would be sore from the amount of times they had fucked her alone. In fact, every part of her feels raw and inhuman. She no longer feels like a person and she wishes they would just get it over with and kill her. They had saved her from her sickness, only to keep her as a doll, a plaything, and she knows she won’t get the bliss of death. She doesn’t want to see the Winter Soldier, Bucky, whoever. She wants to be left alone forever, to curl into a corner and never have to see anyone or anything ever again.

But she doesn’t get that. She's hauled up from the ground and shoved hard through a door. It slams closed behind her. Tears form in her eyes when she sees him, and then drip down her cheeks when he doesn’t know her name. For a few long moments he can’t remember her name. He stares at her from where they had left him slumped again the floor, and chatters wildly at her, trying to get her name to come to him. She doesn’t look anywhere but him, afraid of the blood and machines and leather.

Everything is horrible.

And she doesn’t want to go near him, not with the new metal arm they’ve given him, not when he’s unstable. She doesn’t trust _it_ and she doesn’t trust _him_ at the moment. It’s possible they’ve given him some sort of orders to trick her, to hurt her.

She doesn’t want anyone hurting her anymore. She finds it easier to give into pain. If she believed that this life is one she wants then the pain isn’t so bad. But she doesn’t want to have to pretend to endure pain from someone she’s come to care for.

But then the memory of only a few hours ago comes rushing back. Of Bucky begging for someone, anyone, but mostly her and his mother and Steve, to _please, please, please_ end this horror. She remembers the laughter in her ear as she was bent over a table, pants yanked down, ass swatted until it was aching, fucked raw.

She kneels down. “You know me.”

Bucky glances at her. “Yes.”

“Are you under orders?”

“No.”

She creeps closer. “I’m sorry. I heard you calling for me.”

“I heard you calling for me too. What happened to you?”

She ignores him. “Did it really work?”

“It’s starting to.” He blinks hard and rolls onto his back, arms spread wide. “It’s starting to become fuzzy. For a couple hours…I didn’t know anything.”

They’re trying to make the brainwashing stick then. “You’re strong. Normal people couldn’t endure this,” she murmurs, and that’s when he looks at her, _really_ looks at her.

“And what about you then?” He sits up, reaches out and grabs her ankle and yanks her out of her crouching position. A yelp rips past her lips as her sore ass hits the rough flooring. He pulls her to him with little regard for the grip he has on her or the current state of her body. “What did they do to you?” Rage coats his tone, a vicious righteousness.

“You’re hurting me,” she whispers, trying to squirm away, pry his grip from her ankle. “Stop. Please _stop_.” Her voice hurts for how many times she’s had to yell that the last few weeks.

She hates that word. _Stop_. No one listens to stop. Stop is a weak word. But he does. Bucky pulls his hand away and looks ashamed. “Sorry.” Then, “What did they do to you? Tell me, please.”

“You know what they did to me,” she spits. When he reaches out again she recoils and knows she must have a disgusted look on her face. “What? Do you want a turn too?” She looks to the door and screams, “Is that why I’m in here?!” She tries to keep the tears out of her voice but it doesn’t seem to work.

Bucky jerks away from her as though slapped but she can’t be bothered to care. It’s exactly what they want, she knows, for them to fight and distrust each other, to sow seeds of doubt. Because to ruin their friendship, to break them apart, and leave each of them alone when they had known friendship and companionship would be devastating. It just might break them.

She stands and wraps her arms around herself, doesn’t look at him. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you-,”

“I don’t know what you would and wouldn’t do anymore.” She backs away from him. “I don’t know you. I don’t know what they did to you.”

The door opens when she starts to pound on it, desperate suddenly to get away from her only ally. “Ready to come back to me, little bird? I told you, didn’t I? Can’t trust him. He’d rip you to pieces sooner than the rest of us.” Markov shakes his head. “Shameful. But maybe I’ve finally convinced you of your worth. You know what you are now.” His hand grips her hard, pulling her back flush against his chest so she’s facing Bucky, as his other reaches up to grope her through her dress, fingers deftly pinching one nipple.

She whimpers and tries to squirm away, but after what she’s been through she knows it’s a fruitless effort. But she’s so tired, she hasn’t been allowed to rest for weeks. Thinking is an effort, the world around her hazy and confusing. There’s no longer a person inside her body, just a floating husk of someone who _used_ to be someone.

But somehow Bucky recognizes the person still hiding inside her. And that’s when all hell breaks loose.

The metal arm, as it were, has its uses.

She must blackout because the next thing she knows is that she’s being carried out of the room, people of all kinds scurrying out of their way. His eyes are blank, no sign at all of Bucky Barnes. Markov is laughing, someone’s blood is splattered against the wall. _Someone_ is splattered against the wall.

Two terrified men follow them down the dark hall, guns pointed at his back.

They’re shut inside another cell where he puts her down on a filthy cot. And then, even blank and unknowing as he is, he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

She lets out a strangled cry and wraps her arms around him, pulling until he’s on the cot with her. Nervous hands stroke his hair, “Come back. Please come back. Come back to me.” The thought of his humanity, his kindness, being ripped away from him makes her grip him tightly, protectively. “Don’t leave me alone. I’m sorry.” Numbness is starting to spread over her again, terror distorting everything around her.

When, after a few hours, he whispers her name against her neck and falls dead asleep, she breathes a sigh of relief. Not lost yet then, possible to bring home. His weight is heavy but good and definitely warm and so she falls asleep as well, no longer able to stand reality another second.

 

~

 

She shakes Bucky gently awake. “Please Buck…”

“What’s wrong?” He murmurs, blinking up at her dark outline.

“I’m afraid. Could I-,”

He’s already sliding over, making room for her body against his. She lies uneasy and stiff for a time before Bucky slides his arm down her back and pulls her closer as he turns on his side. “What is it?”

“Why did they make me remember?”

“Who?” He asks, immediately alarmed.

Curling against him she murmurs who she means. “They let you forget. Why didn't they let me forget?”

Something like irritation swells in his chest as he asks, “Wouldn’t you rather remember? I would give anything to be able to remember.”

She frowns against his neck. “No. Remembering is terrible and painful.”

“You lose yourself if you can’t-,”

“I don’t care,” she says viciously. “I would rather forget it all.” Her fingers curl into his shirt. “I would rather forget every goddamn thing.”

He sits up and looks down at her. “Even me?”

Her blood goes cold. “That’s not what I said-,”

“It’s what you meant.”

She sits up as well and climbs out of bed, apparently she’s doomed not to have a safe place ever again. “It’s not what I meant.” She’s stubborn about it, unyielding. “I want to forget the rape and the violence and the terror of every waking moment. I-,” She stops, thinks for a moment before whirling to look at him. “Is that why you pulled me here? Kidnapped me and forced me to-to remember-,”

“You need to remember-,”

“Why?” Her voice is cutting, “So you aren’t so alone and empty? I can’t tell you who you are. I don’t know you anymore either.”

The silence that follows is deep and revealing. “Is that what you think of me?”

“I was fine.” Maybe it’s because of the dream but she feels sick and disgusted. “Why did you have to rip me away from that?”

“Because it isn’t real!” He shouts, getting out of bed to pace the floor. “None of it is fucking real!”

Her mouth trembles, “So? What’s so bad about that? You just don’t want to feel alone.”

“And you just don’t want to deal with the fact that nothing is ever going to go back to the way it was,” he seethes. “You’re afraid to remember because you know you’re never getting that time, those people, that life _back_.” He glares at her until tears start to drip down her face.

His heart lurches when she looks him in the eyes and says, “I wish I’d never met you. I wish I had been cruel to you when we first met. I wish I would have fought against you. Then, maybe they would have killed me.”

“No,” Bucky whispers. “Please don’t say that-,”

“I hate you for dragging me here, making me relive the horror. Showing me around like I'm some fucking prize.” She pulls open his bedroom door. “I wish you would stay the fuck away from me. You tell yourself you’re taking me home but really you’re trapping me here with you and that makes you no better than _them_.”

Before he can respond she’s gone.

 

~

 

She takes to shadowing Steve.

Steve is calm and strong and kind. He doesn’t yell at her, he never makes her remember things she doesn’t want to, and he smiles every time he sees her. It’s almost like having a real friend. Unexpectedly she finds herself missing Kristina and she wonders briefly what happened to her friend.

But Steve quickly becomes someone she trusts. Bucky is never around when she’s around and vise-verse. She almost has to wonder if Steve knows they aren’t talking. Although, Bucky probably did talk to Steve about that sort of thing. For a moment, not talking to Bucky is fine. Once she gets some sleep however and thinks about what she said she feels the hot weight of guilt weighing on her. None of it is his fault and she shouldn’t have treated him as though it was.

He doesn’t come to her though and she doesn’t know how to reach out and so it’s miserable again.

One night she’s sitting with Steve on a common room couch, absolutely exhausted from the day’s round of testing and therapy and strain. He’s drawing and her head is resting against his arm as she watches. Usually he would give in and draw whatever she wanted, the movement of his arm and the soft sound of pencil on paper very soothing. Today is no different.

She had requested him to draw Bucky. Steve had hid his surprise well and started, making no comment about it.

“How would you like me to-,”

“Like now? Please? Exactly how he is now.”

Steve does just that, only pausing to glance up when Bucky himself enters the room. He freezes, taking in her blanket swaddled figure leaning into Steve’s arm, eyelids drooping, eyes never leaving his hand, seemingly at peace.

A hot flame of jealousy ignites in him. They both look at peace, calm. It’s obvious who she would rather be around. Steve opens his mouth to say something to his oldest friend but Bucky is already backing out of the room.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!

“Have you seen Bucky?” Steve glances up from the paperwork at his desk. “Wanda said he had a bad session today and I can’t find him.” Her fingers are twisting together nervously and she looks ashamed of herself suddenly, “I’m sorry that was rude. You were on a mission. Are you okay?” But she’s nervous and her hands haven’t stopped moving once. She looks vaguely sick, like she might collapse at any moment.  

Steve’s forehead creases as his brows knit together, “I’m fine. The mission was fine. Bucky usually goes to the roof or the screening room when things get tough for him. He seemed fine earlier. Are you-,” She darts forward and kisses him on the forehead, smoothing away the worry lines with her thumb before she disappears.

Bucky is not on the roof but Steve knows Bucky and so he _is_ in the screening room with an old movie playing. She walks down the shallow stairs to where he sits, lounging, tears silently tracking his cheeks. They haven’t spoken in six weeks and she hates herself. “Bucky?” She asks, pulling her robe tighter around herself, voice barely above a whisper.

His eyes slowly move over to her, glance over her sullenly, before he whispers. “ _Potrzebujesz czegoś_?”

_Need something?_

She collapses onto the seat next to him, covers her face with her hands as she braces her elbows on her knees. She feels broken, every bit of herself worn and torn and ripped. But she takes a shuddering breath and says, “I’m sorry. We haven’t spoken and it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said the things I did. I don’t blame you for what happened to me and I don’t want you to leave me alone and I’m just really, really sorry. I didn’t know how to say it. But today I heard you uh, that you, um-,” She bites her lip and dares a glance over at him. But Bucky isn’t looking at her.

“Snapped?”

She winces, “I could hear you screaming. It reminded me of-,” Abruptly she falls silent and swallows harshly, memories of desolate hallways and flickering lights and pain and torture echoing through her mind. One of the first things that had come back to her had been the way Bucky sounded when he screamed, the animal like noises that had ripped from his throat when they tortured him.    

“No,” he starts, shaking his head, sitting up to look over at her, “I’m sorry-,” he’s cut off when she dives over and wraps her arms around his shoulders. Bucky can’t help it, he wraps his arms around her waist and buries his nose in her neck. “I’m sorry for what I said too. I did bring you here for selfish reasons, just wanted you back because you understand. You know what happened. I felt so alone but when I thought about you I didn’t. But I don’t want you to remember if you don’t want to.” Bucky pulls back to look in her eyes. “And it’s okay if you hate me for that, for bringing you here.”

She makes a gentle shushing sound and pulls him back to her. “I don’t hate you. I’m sorry. I would never have been cruel to you. You were the first kind person I’d encountered in weeks, even if you were strapped to a chair and terrified. You were so nice to me.”

For a long time they just sit there like that, movie playing in the background, shadows dancing over them. Bucky doesn’t want to let her go, a deep sense of relief flooding through him at having her so close and draped around him. “I missed you.” He tightens his arms around her middle.

“I missed you too. It’s easier to pretend it didn’t happen. It’s less painful.” She pulls back and looks him in the eyes, “You have to understand that. I didn’t want the pain of remembering again. They made me aware of what was happening.”

“It’s not the truth,” he whispers. “But I understand, or I can try to.” Bucky stokes her back gently, cradling her carefully as though she’s the most precious thing in the world. “They stole everything away from me. I don’t know which is worse, remembering or forgetting, but I’m sorry either way.”

She nuzzles into him with a contented hum. Bucky shifts her in his arms until she moves closer to him. Her thighs bracketing his, her chest pressed to his, face buried in his neck. “Don’t leave me.”

He’s about to answer when he feels her lips against his neck, soft and gentle. In bliss, his eyes close, head tilting back to give her better access. When he feels her tongue against his skin Bucky’s eyes snap open.

“Bucky,” she murmurs, voice reverent, “Will you kiss me?”

Even though it’s been so long, he doesn’t hesitate. He pulls her down and presses his mouth against hers. It’s chaste at first but then she moves her lips against his and nothing else matters but getting closer to her.

Gripping her hips he stands, lips never parting from hers, and turns. He presses her into the wide couch-like theater seat as her legs wrap around his hips, pulling him closer. “Bucky,” she whispers, hands going to either side of his face. “Bucky…”

“I’m here, doll.”

She runs her thumb over his lips. “I loved you.”

“Loved?”

“Maybe I still love you.”

He nudges her nose with his, “I love you.” And then, “I want you.”

A desperate little mewl leaves her, “Then take me.”

“Not here.” He strokes her cheek with his thumb, hand cradling her jaw. “Will you come to my room?”

“I’ll meet you there in five minutes.” She leans up and kisses him again. “I’m sorry for the things I say.”

He kisses her nose. “It’s okay. Please don’t leave me alone again.”

She thinks her heart might’ve broken as she looks up into honest blue eyes.

 

~

 

“They’re going to psychoanalyze this for all its worth, Bucky.” He doesn’t respond, only keeps staring at the scarred curves of her body, robe pooled on the floor around her. Hands come up to cover her breasts, “And they’re going to try to separate us again and _stop staring at me_!”

His eyes snap to her hers and his voice is a low threatening growl when he says, “Let them fucking try to separate us.” Then he moves closer and put his hands on her hips, “Doll, I don’t wanna look away. You’re so beautiful.”

Her lips twist to the side as she examines Bucky, who is still clad in boxers and nothing else. “You look different.”

“I guess I do, doll,” he says self-consciously. “I dunno though. Don’t really remember.”

She smiles sadly, “I do. You were lean. And then you were skinny. And then they fed you up and you were lean again. But now,” she touches his arm, “You’re muscle.”

Bucky leans down to press his mouth to her shoulder, littering soft kisses against her skin. “Let me take care of you, darlin’.”

“That’s a pretty accent, _darlin’_ ,” she teases. Her voice takes on a little whine then, “Take care of me, please.”

“’Course, sweetheart.” Bucky nudges her jaw to the side with his nose, lips ghosting along her neck. “It’s just us. It’s just me and you.”

For a moment she hesitates before her hand slips under the waistband of his boxers. Her fingertips just barely graze the base of his cock before she retracts her hand. “I don’t know how to do this. We only ever…with them watching and I…I don’t know if I had s-sex before they got me.”  

“We don’t have to. I just missed you so much, doll, for so long-,”

Her lips suddenly smash against his as she pushes him backwards. “I’m sorry.” She says as he flops back on the bed, looking a little shocked that she could manhandle him even a little, even though he knows how strong she is now. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I said those things.”

“I know. I know.” He makes grabby hands at her, “C’mere.”

She collapses on top of him and presses her lips harshly to his, all teeth and tongues and mostly painful. “I need you right now. I need you to be inside me.”

“Doll,” he reaches between her legs as he rolls them over so he’s hovering above her.

“No. I need you,” she grinds against him. “Fuck me.”

He shushes her and pushes her hips down, “Let me take care of you like you asked. Just relax for a minute.” Huffing out a hard breath she relaxes into the pillows. “There you go. We have time, doll. It’s not like before.”

Bucky scoots down the bed, until he’s level with her core, and presses his tongue to her heat, licking a long stripe against her. She gasps and clutches his hair, unused to the sensation. “Bucky,” she whines. “Please-,” His tongue is gentle against her, and talented, as he swirls small shapes against her clit. “Fuck, _James_!” She comes against his face, hips bucking upwards against his mouth. Y/N goes stiff as he works she through it, only stopping when she relaxes back into the bed, thighs still twitching.

It’s been a long time for her and she wants him with her, _inside_ her as soon as possible. Still Bucky looks up at her, head against the inside of her thigh as he strokes slow circles into her hip, and says, “Baby, it’s been a long time hasn’t it?”

She looks down at him, memories flashing through her eyes, and says, “I was rough with you. And you were rough with me.”

He frowns but nods, “I think so yeah.”

“I don’t remember that tongue of yours.”

“ _Chcesz, żebym to jeszcze raz?_ ”

_Do you want me to do it again?_

She shakes her head and runs her hands through his soft hair. “I want to do the same for you.”

“Not-,”

“We have time,” she reminds him. “And I want to. Come here.” She beckons him, motioning him to slide up the bed.

Again he shakes his head, bringing his thumb down to rub against her folds slowly, parting her lips while he looks up at her and latches onto her clit again. Her thighs clamp around his head before he pulls back and disentangles himself from her. He slips out of his boxers and says, “Not today.”

“Why?”

“I’ll come down your throat and then where will we be?”

“You’re a super soldier-,”

“There’s still a wait time and I don’t wanna wait. If I come it’s going to be in your pussy.” Y/N’s hands go to his biceps as he looks down at her, hair concealing part of his face. “I want to feel your cunt milk me for everything I have, baby.” She groans and runs her nails against his burning skin. Bucky lowers his head and takes one nipple in his mouth, flicking his tongue over the sensitive bud. “And then I’m going to watch it drip out of you,” he says, rutting against her slowly.

A breathless, “Okay. Oh God, fuck, okay,” leaves her lips, fingers tracing down his abs to guide him to her entrance.

When he finally makes that slow side inside her she gasps and clutches his shoulders. “Oh, god you feel so fucking good. You’re so wet and tight.” He has to still himself so he doesn’t come immediately, wanting to draw out the feeling of being so fully connected with her for the first time in decades and the first time ever alone.

It feels familiar too. Not the gentleness, no he had hardly ever been gentle with her before. The closeness feels familiar, the bond.

“Let them fucking psychoanalyze us. This is the only things that feels right.” He mutters lowly in her ear. “I don’t care, I love you.”

She digs her fingers into his shoulders. “ _Kocham Cię._ ” And then in English she murmurs, “God, I think I love you too.”

“Good,” he whispers, setting a slow pace.

After that the only sounds between then are low pants and murmurs of love. It doesn’t feel real. After everything they’d been through, how could they be allowed to find such love with each other?

His thrusts are slow, deep, and hard. She feels it everywhere, her toes tingling and curling as a warmth twists in the pit of her stomach. “Bucky,” she whispers, “I’m going to come. Please make me come.”

“I got you, darlin’. Come on my cock, baby, c’mon, come on my cock. _Ah_ -,” He stills for a moment, determined to make her come first, come around his dick, so he can feel her wet heat pulse around him. “Shit, you’re squeezing me so well, doll.”

She clenches her walls around him again, making him shout out. “I wanna come, Bucky.”

His fingers finds clit, “Fucking come for me then baby.”

And she does. As soon as she arches into him and her pussy contracts around him he spills into her, thrusting erratically through his orgasm. He collapses.

It’s a long time before either one of them moves. Bucky only moves when he starts to soften inside her. With a grunt he pulls back and goes to his original position of having his head pillowed on her thigh. “What’re you doing?” She asks sleepily, fingers brushing through his hair.

“I told you I was gonna watch it drip out of you.”

She laughs quietly before twitching as his fingers flit over her sensitive core. “Careful, Buck.” His tongue darts out, catching a few drops of come before he gives a small lick to her clit. She groans lowly. “Can’t wait to make my therapist turn red when I tell her about this.”

Bucky chuckles and kisses her thigh. “Keep this between us.”

“They’ll know we had sex.”

“Doesn’t mean they get detail. Our lives are still ours, Y/N. Maybe it’s time we figured that out, doll.”


	13. Chapter 13

This series is being discontinued. I apologize, I know people hate it when authors do this. 


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